The Business World

[Local_Pol]

Terminology

Contractor A gambler who never gets to shuffle, cut, or deal.

Bid A wild assed guess carried out to two decimal places.

Low Bidder A contractor lying awake at night, wondering what was left out of the bid.

Engineer's Estimate The cost of construction in Heaven

Critical Path Method A management technique used to ensure that you lose your shirt on a project, while being under perfect control at all times.

OSHA A Federal program consisting of a protective coating made by half baking a mixture of the following ingredients:

1. Fine Print
2. Red Tape
3. Split Hairs
4. Baloney carefully applied through the use of a double barreled sawed off shotgun.

Strike An effort to increase egg production by strangling the chicken.

Auditors Highly qualified [Re: "Booksmart"] individual(s) who go onto the battlefield after the war is lost and bayonet the wounded.

Lawyers The "highly anointed" people who go onto the battlefield after the Auditor(s) and then strip the bodies.

Computer Program A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages.

Programming To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head into a brick wall, with fewer opportunities for reward.

[Local_Pol]

Bullshit Bingo

Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? What about those long and boring conference calls? Here's a way to change all of that.

1. Before (or during) your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare your "Bullshit Bingo" card by drawing a square ... I find that 5" x 5" is a good size and dividing it into columns five across and five down. That will give you 25 - 1 inch blocks.

2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:

synergy, strategic fit, core competencies, best practice, bottom line, revisit, take that offline, 24/7, out of the loop, benchmark, value added, proactive, winwin, think outside the box, fast track, result driven, empower (or mpowerment), knowledge base, at the end of the day, touch base, mindset, client focus(ed), ballpark, game plan, leverage.

3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.

4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

5. Testimonials from satisfied "Bullshit Bingo" players:

"I had been in the meeting for only five minutes when I won."
Jack W., Boston

"My attention span at meetings has improved dramatically."
David D., Florida

"What a gas! Meetings will never be the same for me after my first win."
Bill R., New York City

"The atmosphere was tense in the last process meeting as 14 of us waited for the fifth box."
Ben G., Denver

"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed "BULLSHIT!" for the third time in two hours."
Kathleen L., Atlanta

[Gypsy]

LOL that one is a keeper to be shared!

[Dan]

Done the BS Bingo thing...we made up cards that all had the same common sayings that we expected to here in the briefing. Then gave them out to everyone exept the CG and CSM. I thought they were going to freak when someone won

.............

[Local_Pol]

Management Options: Riding a dead horse....

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. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.

8. Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.

9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."

11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.

14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

15. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.

16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.

20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position

[Local_Pol]

DILBERT'S RULES OF ORDER

1. I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow is not looking good either.

2. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

3. Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to get along without it.

4. Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.

5. Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn't there the first time, chances are you won't be needing him again.

6. I don't have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem.

7. Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?

8. My reality check bounced.

9. On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.

10. I don't suffer from stress. I am a carrier.

11. You are slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.

12. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

13. Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

14. Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

15. A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.

16. Don't be irreplaceable - if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

17. After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.

18. The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

19. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

20. Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

21. If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

22. When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

23. Following the rules will not get the job done.

24. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, " How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

25. Don't let yesterday take up too much of today.