business one-liners 119
Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
Kramer's Law: You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.
The Last One's Law Of Program Generators: A program generator creates programs that are more "buggy" than the program generator.
Law Of The Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
The Law Of The Too Solid Goof: In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors. Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either. Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it immediately.
Robert E. Lee's Truce: Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgement.
 |
|
|
|
|
 | ||||
Kramer's Law: You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.
The Last One's Law Of Program Generators: A program generator creates programs that are more "buggy" than the program generator.
Law Of The Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
The Law Of The Too Solid Goof: In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors. Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either. Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it immediately.
Robert E. Lee's Truce: Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgement.
how to look very busy
by Dan Zevin
Generally, this will not be a concern until you are promoted to an executive position. But once you've created the illusion that you serve even the slightest purpose at your place of "business," there's no telling how far you'll go. In the real working world, productivity is all a matter of appearances.
Appearance: You are furiously taking notes while conducting an important telephone marketing survey.
Reality: You are pretending to take notes while talking to your friend who has called collect from Bulgaria.
Appearance: You are on the phone with a client in New York and you have said, "Yes sirree! That stock is about to shoot through the roof, now's a great time to buy, I tell ya!"
Reality: You are on the phone with a friend in Guam and you have said, "Yeah, this job is terrible, and my boss is such a pushy whining... Yes sirree! That stock is about to shoot through the roof, now's a great time to buy, I tell ya!"
Appearance: You are at your computer writing a serious business memorandum to your department supervisior.
Reality: You are at your computer telling dead-baby jokes to your e-mail correspondent in Namibia.
Appearance: You are urgently plugging numbers into a complicated spreadsheet.
Reality: You are playing Tetris.
Appearance: You are tapping away on calculator keys, helping out the accounting department.
Reality: You are paying your electric bill.
Appearance: You are reading the DOS manual.
Reality: You are reading the TV guide you placed in the DOS manual.
Appearance: You are staring at an empty computer screen, absorbed in deep thought.
Reality: You have pressed "Escape" just in time, erasing a MacDraw portrait entitled "Supervisor with Pitchfork Wound Clinging to a Cliff"
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Generally, this will not be a concern until you are promoted to an executive position. But once you've created the illusion that you serve even the slightest purpose at your place of "business," there's no telling how far you'll go. In the real working world, productivity is all a matter of appearances.
Appearance: You are furiously taking notes while conducting an important telephone marketing survey.
Reality: You are pretending to take notes while talking to your friend who has called collect from Bulgaria.
Appearance: You are on the phone with a client in New York and you have said, "Yes sirree! That stock is about to shoot through the roof, now's a great time to buy, I tell ya!"
Reality: You are on the phone with a friend in Guam and you have said, "Yeah, this job is terrible, and my boss is such a pushy whining... Yes sirree! That stock is about to shoot through the roof, now's a great time to buy, I tell ya!"
Appearance: You are at your computer writing a serious business memorandum to your department supervisior.
Reality: You are at your computer telling dead-baby jokes to your e-mail correspondent in Namibia.
Appearance: You are urgently plugging numbers into a complicated spreadsheet.
Reality: You are playing Tetris.
Appearance: You are tapping away on calculator keys, helping out the accounting department.
Reality: You are paying your electric bill.
Appearance: You are reading the DOS manual.
Reality: You are reading the TV guide you placed in the DOS manual.
Appearance: You are staring at an empty computer screen, absorbed in deep thought.
Reality: You have pressed "Escape" just in time, erasing a MacDraw portrait entitled "Supervisor with Pitchfork Wound Clinging to a Cliff"
technology takes over
by Joe Mullich, AmericanWay Magazine, November 15, 1994
1. Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you write is letterhead.
2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.
3. You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house, only computers with laser printers.
4. You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
5. You disdain people who use low baud rates.
6. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers, and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.
7. You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.
8. You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it.
9. You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.
10. You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice number," since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.
11. You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-).
13. You back up your data every day.
14. You know more about the computer than about all of your friends.
15. You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
17. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.
18. You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot's phrase "electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts.
19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.
20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
21. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling.
22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.
23. Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.
24. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are.
25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
26. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.
28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.
29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better, the track ball or the track pad.
30. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.
31. You email this message to your friends over the net. You'd never get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face.
32. You don't even read magazine articles anymore, unless someone's keyed them into e-mail and forwarded it to you.
33. You print the itinerary of your vacation from a scheduler software.
34. You pack the laptop computer first for any trip.
35. While you're away from home, the first three numbers you call are your voicenet, a bulletin board, and one of your e-mail accounts.
36. You are reading this from a screen.
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
1. Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you write is letterhead.
2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.
3. You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house, only computers with laser printers.
4. You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
5. You disdain people who use low baud rates.
6. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers, and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.
7. You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.
8. You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it.
9. You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.
10. You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice number," since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.
11. You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-).
13. You back up your data every day.
14. You know more about the computer than about all of your friends.
15. You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
17. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.
18. You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot's phrase "electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts.
19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.
20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
21. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling.
22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.
23. Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.
24. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are.
25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
26. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.
28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.
29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better, the track ball or the track pad.
30. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.
31. You email this message to your friends over the net. You'd never get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face.
32. You don't even read magazine articles anymore, unless someone's keyed them into e-mail and forwarded it to you.
33. You print the itinerary of your vacation from a scheduler software.
34. You pack the laptop computer first for any trip.
35. While you're away from home, the first three numbers you call are your voicenet, a bulletin board, and one of your e-mail accounts.
36. You are reading this from a screen.
business one-liners 05
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.
A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the pants.
A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to put in his mouth.
A penny saved has not been spent.
A penny saved is an economic breakthrough.
A penny saved is ridiculous.
A problem cannot be solved using the same level of thinking that created it. (In other words, if you screw it up, you can't fix it.)
A real person has two reasons for doing anything...a good reason and the real reason.
A short cut is the longest distance between two points.
A short line outside a building becomes a long line inside.
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the pants.
A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to put in his mouth.
A penny saved has not been spent.
A penny saved is an economic breakthrough.
A penny saved is ridiculous.
A problem cannot be solved using the same level of thinking that created it. (In other words, if you screw it up, you can't fix it.)
A real person has two reasons for doing anything...a good reason and the real reason.
A short cut is the longest distance between two points.
A short line outside a building becomes a long line inside.
Page 21 of 44 «« Previous | Next »»