Okay, for all you Dilbert-esque corporate slaves, I pose this question to you “What is the absolutely most ridiculously dumb Memo you have received in the work place?” I mean, official memo from somebody who works for the same company, sent with the utmost sincerity.
Here’s Mine (I’m sure you can top it):
Our Systems Director sent out and e-mail with a word attachment that contained a memo asking employees to please refrain from mailing attachments of memos that could be delivered in short e-mail form, so as to not bog down the e-mail server.
It was at that moment I came to the horrible realization that Dilbert is not an exaggeration of the work place.
This is a memo from Smeghead (that’s what we call our supervisor, named after Rimmer from Red Dwarf):
"To help expidite our cross training needs, instead of having schedules classes, we’ve decided to do OJT. On Monday, Scott will help Bob learn more about Project:Alamo while Danny teaches Ron about the Clarent side of our operation. If Scott is too busy to teach Bob, then Bob should instruct Ron in Clarent and Danny should work with Scott to try to learn more about Alamo. If Danny cannot get away from his duties, then Ron should work with Bob to learn about Clarent, and Scott should spend what time he can spare with Danny to get more Clarent experience. If both Bob and Scott are too busy, then Danny should instruct Ron in Clarent. If Danny cannot get away from his duties, then Ron should work with Bob to learn about Clarent, and Scott should spend what time he can spare with Danny to get more Clarent experience. If Scott and Danny cannot get away and Ron cannot spare much time, but Bob is free, then I would like Bob to sit with Ron so Ron can bring him up to date on Alamo.
If we are completely swamped and no one can spare time for training, then go about your usually daily business."
This is not a memo to be read first thing Monday morning. All four of us were stumped trying figure out who was supposed to train who from that memo and after about 15 minutes said, ‘fuck it’ and went about our normal duties.
I hope that the above memo containing incomprehensible OJT instructions was the result of a warped sense of humor, rather than a sincere effort to accomplish something.
If it was not an attempt at humor, the man is a micromanager. Wait until no-one’s looking, and pitch him out an open window. If you work on the first floor, you have my sympathy.
He meant every word. That’s why we call him Smeghead. I saved a copy of that in my inbox for the new hires so they can see exactly what we have to deal with.
My favorite part of this memo are the two lines in bold, proving even Smeghead wasn’t following what he was writing. It was 2 days after we got this when Scott noticed that.
But you’d be surprised about how badly people botch e-mails (then again, maybe you wouldn’t).
It’s fairly often that:
A sends a message to B.
B forwards message to C, with snide comment.
C replies to forwarded message (ie, to A), saying what a
jackass A is.
Another non memo:
When I was in college, I worked in food service. One employee noticed that the closing shift people were not putting the cookie warmer in the walk in freezer at night, like they were supposed to. So this person decided to make a sign.
She could have wrote:
“It is important that this warmer be put away every night.”
She also could have wrote:
“It is imperative that this warmer be put away every night.”
But for some inexplicable reason, the sign said:
“It is impertinent that this warmer be put away every night.”
Sad. And the worst part was, the person who I believed did this was an ENGLISH major. :eek:
I don’t have the actual memo anymore, but a few months ago (1Q 2000, that is) we got a memo saying that one of the secretaries had just come across a stack of handouts relating to our options for benefits for 1998. (We can only make changes to our benefits, like adding or dropping certain types of insurance or changing the level of retirement contributions, once a year during December, and we always get several different packets of information about various plans in November.) Apparently these handouts had not, erroneously, been distributed back in '98. It was not specified why these now totally useless documents (enrollment options change every year, and the year for these documents was long since over) would serve any purpose whatsoever, but we were assured that copies would be distributed to all, with apologies for the delay. Sure enough, everyone got one the very next day.
my office is split between those who work on traditional PC’s (the haves) and thos who work on WinTerms (the have-nots).
during a recent server outage, our illustrious IS department issued an e-mail, instructing all users to refrain from logging into the server until necessary repairs had been made. This prohibition was to remain in effect until a subsequent e-mail was sent out, advising that the problem was corrected.
what makes this dumb, you might ask? In order for the have-nots to receive their e-mail, THEY MUST LOG ONTO THE SERVER!
Once upon a time, I was at a place that compulsively reorg’d itself. They couldn’t figure out why their venture wasn’t profitable, so apparently they decided the key was getting the company into the proper organizational structure. Naturally, they didn’t know what that was, so evidently they reorg’d randomly every six months or so in the hope of hitting upon the correct structure by trial and error. I only wish I was kidding.
Anyway, the point is, there was one big reorg where the whole company was affected (we’re talking 3000 people), instead of a function here or there. In order to keep us up on what had been going on, the periodic updates were drafted and distributed via e-mail by the president himself. It’s nice that he tried to stay involved; it’s not so nice what he was wasting his time working on. And the memos themselves…
Each of the memos was a complete description of the company as it was organized at the moment the memo was sent. Each time an organizational change was successfully completed, the memo was revised to provide a new overview of the company, and re-sent. The problem is this: There was never any explanation of what exactly had changed between the previous memo and each new one. Every week or two, we’d all get a forty-page document in our e-mail, a document where anything from a single paragraph to a whole page would be different than it was the week before, and no key as to what exactly had been revised.
The result of this? I’m sure you can guess. After a couple of weeks of playing “find what changed,” we all got fed up and quit reading the memos. And a month later, everyone in the company was hopelessly clueless about who they reported to, or when the change had been made, so essentially the end result of the reorg was to turn the company into a shapeless, chaotic amoeba.
And to top it all off, nobody ever explained to the clueless president why his updates had gone unread. He apparently just thinks everyone in the company (1) hates him or (2) is lazy or (3) both.
When I left, months later, they were still bumbling around and crashing blindly into one another…
