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 submittals...

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 Corporation in Redmond,
Washington.)

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/3MCorp.)

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
Lone 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" (pedophiles?) 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)