IJMC - Real Life Dilberts

What does it say when you submit a letter of resignation and no one even 
replies to it? Does it make you wonder why you were ever there? No 
requests for the work you completed, no questions on the status of what 
you were working on. Ahh, well. Dilberism lives on.                -dave







A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for
people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers.
    Here are the finalists.

1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using
individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and
employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
    (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp in Redmond,
WA.)

2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
    (Lykes Lines Shipping)

3. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used
only for company business.
    (Accounting manager, ElectricBoat Company - these guys make U.S.nuclear
submarines!)

4. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important
interfere with it.
    (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

5. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will
believe you solved this problem in one day!  We've been working on it
for months.  Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when
it's time to tell them.
    (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)
  
6. My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only
needed corrections.  She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she
couldn't edit it.  The disk I gave her was write protected.
    (CIO of Dell Computers)

7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
    (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

8. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday.  When I
told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the
busiest day of the year.  He then asked if we could change her burial to
Friday.  He said, "That would be better for me."
    (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to
discuss it with the employees."
    (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to
inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned
above."
    (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)

11. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning
a project I was working on.  I asked him if tomorrow would be soon
enough. He said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow
to ask for it!"
    (New business manager Hallmark Greeting Cards.)

12. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing
our company's training programs and materials.  In the body of the memo, in
one of the sentences I mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of
the  training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive
committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and  that the
executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch.  When I
asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?)
orking in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with
her demand that I be fired - and the word "pedagogical" circled in red.
The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in
his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told
me not to worry.  He would take care of it. Two days later, a
memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not
be  found in the local Sunday newspaper could be
used in company memos.   A month later, I resigned.  In accordance with
company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from
the Sunday paper.
    (Taco Bell Corporation)