Dilbert Moments

[Zens7s]

This morning I was confronted by yet another Dilbert moment.

I am moving offices between two different buildings on our campus. The maintainance department was scheduled to deliver boxes to my old office so I can complete the rest of the move. I wondered after three days where these boxes are...so I call my assistant and she walks into my TOTALLY EMPTY new office. It doesn't even have furniture yet. There the boxes were, sitting right in the middle of the empty floor.

So when I call the maintainance supervisor she says, "we delivered them there because that is where they are suppposed to end up."

I didn't know whether to laugh or be frightened because this woman has the keys that open every single data warehouse under my control. She would probably walk up to a mainframe, see a cable that was dusty, pull it out and polish it or something.

So what are your Dilbert moments?

[jjcourtright]

The boss has up a single panel of a Dilbert strip. It has Dilbert saying, "I see by the blank look on your face that you don't understand technical speak." Pretty much sums up every interaction that we have here, whether with a soldier or a government employee.

[Zens7s]

Oh dear god...

After I specifically informed the maintenance dept. that I have relocated the other boxes back to the correct location they just sent a whole NEW slew of boxes to my current office. I am swimming in corregated boxes. It's a good thing I am moving in a few weeks. I am taking the extras home. SO THERE!

[phit_demon]

Let me ask you something, when you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of 'The Mondays'"?

[Zens7s]

Let me ask you something, when you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of 'The Mondays'"?
Well, they know better than to say that, or they wouldn't work for me anymore....but I am the sort of person who would look up "money laundering" in the dictionary.

[TLS]

Let me ask you something, when you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of 'The Mondays'"?
I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that.

[Sheriff]

When I first arrived at my job they had some apparatus that needed tweaking, I was put on the project with another person who is quite a bit older and supposedly had experience with similar machines. We sat down face to face and described what we thought we had to do to the machine, I let him go first as I thought he knew better. After listening, I told him what I thought should be changed first (completely different than his idea), he then sat back to think a moment. He then leaned forward and stated that he had just come up with something, and repeated EXACTLY what I had just said. I looked at him for a moment to see if he was kidding, nope, not even a blip on the screen. It has happened after but usually it takes about a week for someone else to claim an idea of mine, I have learned how to handle that type of thing now.

I saw a commercial where an underling employee makes a suggestion in a meeting and it goes nowhere, then his boss says the same thing right after and everyone thinks it is a great idea. My experience was similar except they blamed the difference on hand gestures in the commercial.

[phit_demon]

One time when I worked in a directory enquiries office(Conduit plc, for anyone who gives a shit) I was called into my manager's office. He told me that I needed to smile on the phone more....that's right, despite the fact that customers couldn't see me, he wanted me to smile during every call. During an average shift I took between 600 and 900 calls....facial cramp is NOT fun.:(

[Zens7s]

One time when I worked in a directory enquiries office(Conduit plc, for anyone who gives a shit) I was called into my manager's office. He told me that I needed to smile on the phone more....that's right, despite the fact that customers couldn't see me, he wanted me to smile during every call. During an average shift I took between 600 and 900 calls....facial cramp is NOT fun.:(
This is a direct result of what we like to call "boss was allowed to read the magazines on the plane" syndrome. See, there are all these articles with STUPID ideas in them like "if you are really smiling while on the phone people can hear the change in your voice tone, therefore customer service numbers improve, therefore we make more money, blah blah

99% of them are bullshit. My company is so large that there is actually a small team of people whose entire job is to receive these "pie in the sky" ideas and determine if they should be implemented or if they are shit.

[actualsize]

Too many to remember. But here is a common one:

The boss tells me I have to travel to <insert location name here> I then have to fill out a form and get his signature on it before I can book the trip.

[psychofiend]

Today's Dilbert....
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2005100104659.jpg

[marksiwel]

Dilbert Moments? Mostly through emails and memos
Like we should "Plan to Plan" what the fuck does that mean?
OR "All dogs must have 4 feet on the ground at all times" How am I supposed to shave his pads? What about 3 legged Dogs? How do you pick them up to put them in a Kennel. It was a stupid stupid memo.
Its the meetings that drive me crazy. I live on the otherside of Dallas, so lets have a meeting on the otherside of Ft Worth, oh yeah we gave you 12 hours notice. Also you are expected to get to work on time, even though you will be in traffic for 7 hours. Oh the best part was this,the meeting I HAD to go to was just a "Getting to know you" thing before I got promoted, 2 days later the guy I was met comes to where I am, why couldnt it have waited 2 days?

[ratm1966]

why couldnt it have waited 2 days?
Well, it wouldn't have been a successful day for him if he hadn't inconvenienced at least one person that day.

[Mighty Wingman]

Dilbert Moments? Mostly through emails and memos
Like we should "Plan to Plan" what the fuck does that mean?


Or my personal favorite : Hurry every chance you get.

[Zens7s]

Or my personal favorite : Hurry every chance you get.
I once sent an email to my employees that said "We will be meeting to determine when we will meeting about the meetings, and also to determine when to meet about what we are meeting about."

It was really a birthday lunch, but everyone showed up looking expectant with notepads. I guess they thought I was serious.

[Mighty Wingman]

I guess they thought I was serious.
Their first mistake, they should know better.

[JK]

Don't know if this qualifies as a Dilbert moment, but it's still staggering that this individual got away with it...

Saturday night, I was supposed to shift-lead upstairs in the Media Ops Center, but when I get to work, I discover I've been moved to switching and then previewing. At first I thought maybe someone had called out, but then I realized that the woman (a supervisor) who was supposed to shift-lead downstairs in the Broadcast Ops Center reassigned herself to the upstairs & called in two shift-supervisors to work overtime in the BOC, covering what she had been originally assigned to do- all because she didn't want to deal with the live-events report for the double-header college football games we were airing that night...

Good times.