The following is offered as a pure urban legend, since there is no source authenticating what magazine might have run such a contest. Still, the quotes are fun, if not necessarily real....
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:
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.)
What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff? (Programming intern, Microsoft IIS development team)
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 Lone 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)
I am not making this up. 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)
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Political Calculations' U.S. GDP Temperature Gauge provides a means to quickly evaluate the growth rate of the U.S. economy against the backdrop of how the economy has performed since 1980, with the "temperature" color spectrum ranging from a recessionary "cold" (purple) through an expansionary "hot" (red).
The GDP Temperature Gauge presents both the annualized GDP growth rate as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports for a one-quarter period and also as averaged over a two quarter period, which smooths out the volatility seen in the one-quarter data and provides a better indication of the relative strength of the U.S. economy over time.
Recession Probability Track
Political Calculations' Recession Probability Track shows the probability that the U.S. economy will be in recession 12 months from the indicated date (shown in red) while revealing the probability trend over the past four years.
Previously, the probability of recession peaked at 50% on 4 April 2007, which means that March-April 2008 was the most likely period in which the NBER would have found the U.S. to be in recession.
As it happens, they almost did. The NBER instead chose December 2007 as the beginning month of the most recent recession (we had found a 46% probability for a recession beginning in that month!)
On the Moneyed Midways
Political Calculations is also the online home of On the Moneyed Midways (aka OMM), a review of the best posts contributed to the week's best business and money-related blog carnivals. More than that, we also name one post in each edition as being The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere! and at the end of each year, we name The Best Post of the Year, Anywhere! as well as identifying the best blogs we found during the course of the year!
The link below will take you to the running index containing our most recent back issues (you can easily navigate the index to find older editions.)
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best
free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
ZunZun - Exceptional regression analysis tool. Wolfram Integrator - Solve integrals. Do calculus! Create a Graph - Easy-to-use basic graph-making tool. Many Eyes - Data visualization extraordinaire!
Wolfram Alpha - Computational knowledge engine. Khan Academy - Math & science video mini-lectures!
