Great Throughts Treasury

"Frankly, I?m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue."

"Free Speech ? If you're reading this book, you probably live in a country that has freedom of speech. But there are still some things you'd better not say. For example, you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. You can't say "Mayday" on the radio just for fun. You can't joke about anthrax in the lunchroom. You can't describe your genitalia to your coworkers. You can't threaten to hurt someone. You can't say you're a cop if you're not. You can't lie under oath. You can't curse too much on television. You can't insult minorities. You can't slander. You can't complain about your employer without getting fired. You can't insult gang members and live. You can't mention bombs at the airport. And you can't solicit sex for money. That eliminates most of the things you want to say."

"Free will is an illusion. Humans are nothing but moist robots."

"Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure."

"Free yourself from the shackles of an oppressive reality. What?s real to you is what you imagine and what you feel. If you manage your illusions wisely, you might get what you want, but you won?t necessarily understand why it worked."

"Generica - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions. Used as in - "We were so lost in generica that I forgot what city we were in.""

"Getting Fired ? Big companies have procedures that make it nearly impossible to fire anybody. If you have no career ambition and no pride you can take great advantage of this situation."

"God designs people's emotions so you fall in love with people who, in return, wouldn't even use your hollowed-out skull for a spittoon."

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant."

"Getting Fired for a Living ? If your company is in a death spiral and looking to get rid of employees, it might beef up the severance package until you find it irresistible. That's when you need to stop sabotaging the careers of your coworkers and start sabotaging yourself so you can get fired and get that money... If you're a man ? and your boss is a woman ? wear unappealing shoes to work. Women don't like to be around men with substandard footwear. Women won't admit this, but they consider the men around them to be free-range accessories for their own outfits. If you clash, you're hash. If your ratty appearance doesn't move you to the front of the canning line, then it's time to take drastic actio: stop being a weasel. That's right; forget about hiding your incompetence... Your employer might try to counter your weasel plan with a weasel move of his own, like this: "What's our current severance package?" "I transfer you to a bad job and you quit without giving notice." "I hate your package." "I hear that a lot.""

"Glass Ceiling ? Hypothetical survey question: If you could become CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and all you had to do to get there was kiss 1000 fat, white asses and never see your own children, would you do it? If men and women answer that survey question the same way, I'll admit I'm wrong and that the glass ceiling explains everything. But I think 100% of women would say, "No, thank you," whereas a healthy 30% of men would say, "Let me get my business cards out of the car.""

"Good things do not return in a one-for-one manner. Individual actions are not directly rewarded. It is only on average that doing good improves the quality of life for you and the people around you."

"Great minds don't think alike. If they did, the Patent Office would only have about fifty inventions."

"Group Writing ? Few things in less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed."

"Great Lies of Management ? For your convenience I have compiled and numbered the most popular management lies of all time: (1) Employees are out most valuable asset; (2) I have an open-door policy; (3) You could earn more money under the new plan; (3) We're reorganizing to better serve our customers; (5) The future is bright; (6) We reward risk-takers; (7) Performance will be rewarded; (8) We don't shoot the messenger; (9) Training is a high priority; (10) I haven't heard any rumors; (11) We'll review your performance in 6 months; (12) Our people are the best; (13) Your input is important to us. It's not always easy to tell the difference between a scurrilous management lie and ordinary nit-wittism. When confronted with an ambiguous situation you can usually sniff out the truth by a handy method that I call the "What Is More Likely" test."

"Handling Questions ? People don't ask questions to get answers ? they ask questions to show how smart they are. Your best strategy is to say you'll get back to them but never do it."

"Happiness has more to do with where you are heading than where you are."

"Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people?s hard work is rewarding and faster."

"Have you ever noticed that things that don?t kill you make you weaker? And great minds don?t think alike. If they did, the patent office would only have about fifty inventions. I started getting suspicious when I cried over spilt milk and the cashier took it off my bill. - Wally"

"He used to be a lawyer. It's a different set of guiding principles at work there. Personally, I wouldn't want to run into any of these guys at the big convention after I said something bad about them."

"Headcount Weasels ? If you see your boss walking down the hall with paper of any sort in his hand, he's looking for a headcount to give an assignment to. You'll want to dissolve into the side of the nearest cubicle and remain motionless until the opportunity passes. The more experienced headcounts will learn to make the least amount of disruption in the environment. Try to walk sideways so you don't displace much air. Avoid perfumes, lotions, colognes, and microwave popcorn. Turn down the sound on your computer and turn off your telephone ringer. Do what the submarine captains do ? run silent, run deep."

"Height: Varies depending on my speed relative to the observer. Weight: Sensation caused by gravitational warping of space-time."

"Here's the final script of the rest of your life. My supercomputer predicted it." "Well, according to this I'll be kidnapped by evil squirrels and forced to work in their nut mines." "They get me too." "I didn't even know that evil squirrels had nut mines." "It's probably too late to do anything about it.""

"Here are the most useful activities I can think of for a manager: Eliminate the assholes. Nothing can drain the life-force out of your employees as a few sadistic assholes who seem to exist for the sole purpose of making life hard for others. Unfortunately, assholes often have important job skills that you'd like to keep. My advice is that it's never worth the tradeoff. In an OA5 company if you're making your coworkers unhappy, then you're incompetent by definition. It's okay to be 'tough', and it's okay to be 'aggressive' and it's okay to disagree ? even shout. Some conflict is healthy. But if you do it with disrespect, or you seem to be enjoying it, or you do it in every situation, guess what ? you're an asshole. And you're gone. Teach employees how to be efficient. Do creative work in the morning, and do routine, brainless work in the afternoon. For example, staff meetings should be held in the afternoon."

"Here from an email are some more excellent tips for appearing smart ? Dear Mr. Adams, based on my experiences as a software engineer, I came up with a list of five things you must do in order to be perceived as a genius in the tech industry: (1) Be arrogant: nothing makes you look smarter than dismissing other people's ideas with utter disdain. (2) Refuse to document anything: this guarantees that people will always have to beg you for information. (3) Be opinionated: don't explain why you have your opinions, just put them out there and mock anyone who disagrees. (4) Hang around with smart people: you'll look smart if you hang around with smart people. (5) Resist using any 'process': processes are for losers. Act like you're too smart to need a process because everything you do works on the first try."

"He's the most soul-destroying character in the strip precisely because he doesn't know he's being evil,"

"Hiding Your Incompetence ? If you are colossally incompetent at your job, it's a good idea to keep that fact to yourself. The three most potent cloaking tools of the incompetent weasel are: (1) Getting angry; (2) Talking during meetings; (3) Acting overworked. You can make timid people stop asking questions by answering the wrong question and then acting angry that your answer is not being treated as if it's adequate. When faced with this tactic, most timid victims will give up and look for something else to do."

"He's like a wounded bird. A vulture, but that's still a bird."

"Hey it's lunchtime. Would you like to join me in the canteen?" "Oh... no. I couldn't do that. I'm on the management track. So I can't be seen eating lunch with you. If I'm seen with an ordinary employee then people will think I'm ordinary. I'd like to eat with senior executives, but of course they don't want to be seen with me. So I've perfected a method of slipping quietly away at lunchtime." "...The scary part is that someday that man will be my boss.""

"How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?"

"Highly intelligent and well-informed people disagree on every political issue. Therefore, intelligence and knowledge are useless for making decisions, because if any of that stuff helped, then all the smart people would have the same opinions. So use your "gut instinct" to make voting choices. That is exactly like being clueless, but with the added advantage that you'll feel as if your random vote preserved democracy."

"How about never? Is never good for you?"

"Home is pretty utopian."

"How did people steal before computers?"

"How to Make Your Boring Job Sound Dangerous ? Even the most mundane business activities can sound glorious if you describe them in angry and violent terms. But remember to speak metaphorically, or it will sound silly : e.g., 'I've been putting out fires all day', or 'It's a bomb waiting to go off'."

"Humor also makes you more creative, at least in the short run. I think it has something to do with the fact that humor is a violation of straight-line thinking. Humor temporarily shuts down the commonsense program in your moist robot brain and boots the random idea generator. At least it feels that way to me, figuratively speaking. Perhaps all that is happening is that humor makes one feel energized and relaxed at the same time and that is bound to help creativity."

"Humiliation ? Employee morale is a risky thing. Happy employees will work harder without asking for extra pay. But if they get too happy, endorphins will kick in, egos expand, and everybody starts whining about the fact with their current pay they'll have to live in a dumpster after retirement. The best balance of morale for employee productivity can be described this way: happy, but with low self-esteem. Over the years, employers have developed a broad range of techniques that bring employees' self-esteem back into the 'productive zone' without sacrificing happiness. This chapter discusses the most important humiliation techniques: Cubicles; Hoteling; Furniture; Dress Clothes; Employee Recognition Programs; Undervaluing Employee Contributions; Making them wait."

"How can something that doesn?t exist in physical form have influence over the things that do?"

"Humiliating Assignments ? As a boss, sometimes you need to assign degrading and humiliating tasks to members of your staff, either because the tasks need to get done or sometimes just for fun. Your easiest solution is to give the humiliating assignment to the youngest person... Eventually young employees grow up to be bitter and cynical skin-covered vehicles used to transport bile from one meeting to another. But until then, they are valuable resources. It might be necessary to tell your young employees that an assignment is more important than it really is."

"I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string."

"I asked how many guys would have sex with a robot if it was indistinguishable from a hot human woman. About 95 percent of the hetero guys said they would. The other 5 percent expressed a strong preference for lying."

"I believe exercise makes people smarter, psychologically braver, more creative, more energetic, and more influential."

"I burned out my drawing hand by using it too much. The common word for it is writer's cramp. The fancy words for it are focal dystonia. The symptom in my case was a pinky finger that went spastic when I tried to draw."

"I calculated the total time that humans have waited for web pages to load. It cancels out all the productivity gains of the information age. Sometimes I think the web is a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society."

"I can only think of one thing worse than having all of my stuff stolen. And that is having some of it returned."

"I can't bring myself to believe in a God with a personality like my own. I base that on the paucity of lightning attacks on people who deserve it."

"I can't memorize names and shake hands at the same time."

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

"I can't help." "Why not?" "It's a company policy." "Aren't you the one who makes the company policies?" "Do I have a great job or what?""

"I can't replace the battery in my pager... Yet somehow I managed to operate a motor vehicle to the repair shop and back. It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process."