ID: 15222
At Work
Pick A Power Word
The manager of a ladies' dress shop decided it was time to have a serious talk with one of her sales clerks. "Janet, your figures are well below any of our other sales clerks'. I'm sorry to say that unless you can improve your record soon, we will have to let you go."
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Janet humbly replied. "Is there any advice you could give me on how to do better?"
"There is an old trick I can tell you about," the manager said. "It may sound silly, but it has worked for me in the past. Go through a dictionary until you come to a word that has particular power for you. Memorize it and work it into your sales pitch whenever it seems appropriate. You'll be amazed at the results."
Sure enough, Janet's sales figures improved, and at the end of the month the manager called her in again and congratulated her. "Did you try my little trick?" she asked.
"Yes," Janet nodded. "It took me an entire weekend to find just the right word, but I did ... 'Fantastic'."
"'Fantastic'. What an excellent word," the manager said encouragingly. "How have you been using it?"
"Well, my first customer on Monday was a woman who told me her little girl had just been accepted at the most exclusive prep school in the city. I said, 'Fantastic.' She went on to tell me how her daughter always got straight A's and was the most popular girl in her class. I said 'Fantastic' and she bought $450 worth of clothing."
"My next customer," Janet continued, "told me she was in charge of the Spring Ball at the country club and needed a new formal dress. I said 'Fantastic.' She went on to tell me she had the best figure of anyone on the committee and her husband makes the most money. I said 'Fantastic' and she not only bought the designer gown, but hundreds of dollars of other merchandise. It's been like that all week: the customers keep boasting, I keep saying 'Fantastic', and they keep buying."
"Excellent work, Janet," complimented the manager. "Out of curiosity, what did you used to say to customers before you discovered your power word?"
"I used to say, 'Who gives a shit!" Janet replied with a shrug.
ID: 15265
At Work
The boss, to four of his employees: "I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to let one of you go."
Black employee: "I'm a protected minority."
Female employee: "And I'm a woman."
Oldest employee: "Fire me, buster, and I'll hit you with an age discrimination suit so fast it'll make your head spin."
...at which they all turn to look at the helpless young, white, male employee, who thinks a moment, then responds: "I think I might be gay..."
ID: 1653
At Work
One day at a busy airport, the passengers on a commercial airliner are seated, waiting for the cockpit crew to show up so they can get under way.
The pilot and co-pilot finally appear in the rear of the plane, and begin walking up to the cockpit through the center aisle. Both appear to be blind. The pilot is using a white cane, bumping into passengers right and left as he stumbles down the aisle, and the co-pilot is using a guide dog. Both have their eyes covered with huge sunglasses. At first the passengers do not react; thinking that it must be some sort of practical joke. However, after a few minutes the engines start spooling up and the airplane starts moving down the runway.
The passengers look at each other with some uneasiness, whispering among themselves and looking desperately to the stewardesses for reassurance. Then the airplane starts accelerating rapidly and people begin panicking. Some passengers are praying, and as the plane gets closer and closer to the end of the runway, the voices are becoming more and more hysterical. Finally, when the airplane has less than 20 feet of runway left, there is a sudden change in the pitch of the shouts as everyone screams at once, and at the very last moment the airplane lifts off and is airborne.
Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot breathes a sigh of relief and turns to the Captain, "You know, one of these days the passengers aren't going to scream and we're gonna get killed!"
ID: 13477
At Work
I demand a salary commiserate with my extensive experience.
I have lurnt Word Perfect 6.0 computor and spreasheet progroms.
I am loyal to my employer at all costs.Please feel free to respond to my resume on my office voice mail.
Reason for leaving last job: They insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 am every day. I couldn't work under those conditions.
Failed bar exam with relatively high grades.
My goal is to be a meteorologist, but since I possess no training in meteorology, I suppose I should try stock brokerage.
As indicted, I have over five years of analyzing investments.
Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a Midwest chain store.
The company made me a scapegoat, just like my three previous employers.
I am a perfectionist and rarely if if ever forget details.
ID: 58
At Work
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one
generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
8. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
9. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
10. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
11. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby
deducting its full original cost.
12. Provide additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
13. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
14. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
15. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
ID: 15315
At Work
A man applied for a job as an industrial spy. Together with several other applicants, he was given a sealed envelope and told to take it to the fourth floor.
As soon as the man was alone, he stepped into an empty hallway and opened the envelope. Inside, a message read: "You're our kind of person. Report to the fifth floor Personnel Office."
ID: 17318
At Work
Goodman was a moderately successful stockbroker who dreamed of making the big money some day.
He took his friend out for a drive, and he chose the route carefully in order to impress on him the possibilities of the brokerage business.
"Look at that yacht," he said as they drove slowly past a marina. "That belongs to the senior partner at Merrill Lynch. The head of Goldman, Sachs, owns that one over there, and look at that huge yacht out there - that's the pride and joy of the top seller at Prudential-Bache."
His friend was silent. Goodman turned to look at him and saw a pained look on his face. "What's the matter?" Goodman asked.
"I was just wondering," his friend said, "why aren't there any customers' yachts?"
ID: 13374
At Work
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Quickly, God was faced with a class action suit for failure to file an environmental impact statement. God was granted a temporary permit for the project, but was stymied with the cease and desist order for the earthly part.
Then God said, "Let there be light!" Immediately, the officials demanded to know how the light would be made. Would there be strip mining? What about thermal pollution? God explained that the light would come from a large ball of fire. God was granted provisional permission to make light, assuming that no smoke would result from the ball of fire, and that he would obtain a building permit and to conserve energy, He would have the light out half the time.
God agreed, and offered to call the light "Day" and the darkness "Night". The officials replied that they were not interested in semantics.
God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plant yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit." The EPA agreed, so long as only native seed was used.
Then God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth." The officials pointed out that this would require approval from the Department of Game, coordinated with the Heavenly Wildlife Federation and the Audobon Society.
Everything was okay until God said the project would be completed in six days. The officials said it would take at least two hundred days to review the applications and the impact statement. After that there would be a public hearing. Then there would be ten to twelve months before...
At this point God created Hell.
ID: 5873
At Work
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 the finalists:
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 Corp. in Redmond, WA.)
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."
6. "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.)
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." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
9. 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." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
10. "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)
11. 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." (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 manager, Hallmark Greeting 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 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 (paedophiles?) 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, and in accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)
+10,000 Jokes