business jokes jokes

It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

It's always darkest just before the lights go out.

It's always the wrong time of the month.

It's better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.

It's better to retire too soon than too late.

It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent.

It's Good Enough For Government Work.

It's hell to work for a nervous boss, especially if you are why he's nervous!

Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it, get a larger hammer.

Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner or the workshop. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first always strike your toes.

Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company, Nowadays it insists on it. - Columnist Russell Baker

Banacek's Eighteenth Polish Proverb: The hippo has no sting, but the wise man would rather be sat upon by the bee.

Barker's Proof: Proofreading is more effective after publication.

Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one. - Jules Becker & Co. (Becker goes on to claim that his law permeates industry as well as government, "...once a person has been hired inertia sets in, and the employer would rather settle for the current employee's incompetence and idiosyncrasies than look for a new employee.")

Belle's Constant: The ratio of time involved in work to time available for work is about 0.6. - from a 1977 JIR article of the same title by Daniel McIvor and Olsen Belle, in which it is observed that knowledge of this constant is most useful in planning long-range projects. It is based on such things as an analysis of an eight hour workday in which only 4.8 hours are actually spent working (or 0.6 of the time available), with the rest being spent on coffee breaks, bathroom visits, resting, walking, fiddling around, and trying to determine what to do next.

Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: (1) Houses are for people to live in. (2) Gardens are for plants to live in. (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.

Berkeley's Laws: (1) The world is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be. (2) Ignorance is no excuse. (3) Never decide to buy something while listening to the salesman. (4) Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have a single answer. (5) Most general statements are false, including this one. (6) An exception - test a rule; it never proves it. (7) The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it; it probably isn't right. (8) If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made. (9) Check the answer you have worked out once more - before you tell anybody. - Edmund C. Berkeley

Boucher's Observation: He who blows his own horn always plays the music several octaves higher than originally written.

Bove's Theorem: The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.

Boyle's Laws: (1) The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the wrong denomination. (2) When things are going well, someone will inevitably experiment detrimentally. (3) The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs. (4) Information travels more surely to those with a lessor need to know. (5) An original idea can never emerge from committee in the original. (6) When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform perfectly. (7) The crucial memorandum will be snared in the out-basket by the paper clip of the overlying correspondence and go to file. (8) Success can be insured only by devising a defense against failure of the contingency plan. (9) Performance is directly affected by the perversity of inanimate objects. (10) If not controlled, work will to the competent man until he submerges. (11) The lagging activity in a project will invariably be found in the area where the highest overtime rates lie waiting. (12) Talent in staff work or sales will recurringly be interrupted as managerial ability. (13) The "think positive" leader tends to listen to his subordinates' premonitions only during the postmortems. (14) Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations. (15) On successive charts of the same organization the number of boxes will never decrease. - Charles P. Boyle, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA

Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee; that will do them in.

Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"

Brien's First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

Brilliant's Law Of Limited Ambition: If you can't learn how to do it well, learn how to enjoy doing it poorly.

Brilliant's Observation On Modern Art: Not all our artists are playing a joke on the public. Some are genuinely mad.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

Logic can never decide what is possible or impossible.

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

Love letters, business contracts, and money due you always arrive three weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.

Make dust or eat dust.

Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert.

Many are called, but few are at their desks.

Many quite distinguished people have bodies similar to yours.