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 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 (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 that 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)