[sceptic]

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)

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, Electric Boat Company)

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. "How About Friday?" 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. Speaking the Same Language: 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 one of the
sentences 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 told
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?) working 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)

13. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated
memo from a large communications company: "(Company name) is
endeavorily determined to promote constant attention on current
procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative
ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!"
(Lucent Technologies)

[helene_t]

1. "Please turn on the light in the idle office everyday at 9 a.m. and turn it off at 5 p.m. If some manager from another department notices that the office is iddle, we may loose the office." (1987, a Danish government institute)

2. "There were no qualified candidates for the position". I put a perfectly qualified candidates to the HRM's attention. "Yes, but he's a moslem". 1995, a large Danish data warehouse.

3. "We have decided that the new methodology for computing [....] indicators is more accurate than traditional ones. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to justify the costs of developing the methodology. Now you provide scientific evidence to support the decision". 1999, a major Dutch government institute. Happened to me three times during my one-year stay at said institute.

4. "How did you compile the list of citations for your article?" Well I googled on my keywords, read a some twenty articles from the hit list, included some quotes that actually improved my article, and cited those. "That's not the way to do. First you find out who are in the editorial board and who are their friends. Then you pick some random articles by those guys and cite them. Doesn't matter if there is anything to quote, just cite them". A professor and member of several editorial boards of scientific journals, 2004.

As for Wayne's quote 13, I used to work for a company that used exactly that phrasing. It was SEI. Could be a coincidence.

[Al_U_Card]

The job doesn't have to be done well, if there is a problem later we will redo it then.