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 some of
the submissions:

1. As of tomorrow, employees will be able to access the building only by using
individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and
employees will receive their cards in two weeks.

(This was the winning entry; Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA)

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

3. How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
(Programming intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)

4. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used
only for company business. (Accounting Mgr., Electric Boat Company)

5. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important
interfere with it. (Advertising /Mktg. Mgr., UPS)

6. 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 & Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

7. 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)

8. Quote from the boss: Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.
(Mktg. Executive, Citrix Corporation)

9. 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)

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

11. 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)

12. 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 Mgr., Hallmark Cards)

13. 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 was told that
the executive VP wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why,
I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (paedophiles?) working in
her company.

Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be
fired, with the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR Manager was
fairly reasonable, and once he looked up the word in his dictionary and
made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, 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 that 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 letter by pasting together words from the Sunday paper.
(Taco Bell Corporation)

14. Closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from a large
communications company: "Lucent Technologies 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!"