Management Quotes
Recently, a magazine ran a contest. They were looking for people to
submit quotes from their real-life managers. Here are some of the
submissions:
- 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.)
- What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will
encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
- 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)
- This project is so important, we can't let things that are more
important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing manager, United
Parcel Service)
- 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.)
- 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)
- Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what
I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
- "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)
- "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)
- 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)
- 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.)
- 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)
- 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)