Reprinted with Permission by Quest Software Sept.  2001

Real Life “Dilbert-isms”

This is a collection of real life office experiences that are frighteningly similar to the popular “Dilbert” comic strip. Company names have been removed. Send us your “Dilbert-isms” and they may be published in a future issue of the Pipeline newsletter.
  1. "What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter."
  2. "E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business."
  3. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it."
  4. "Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule."
  5. "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."
  6. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
  7. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose 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."
  8. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees."
  9. "We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the memo mentioned above."
  10. 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!"
  11. 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 in one of the sentences I 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.

    And the winning “Dilbert-ism” quote is:

    "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."