Great Throughts Treasury

"Intimidation By Loudness ? Speak loudly and act irrationally. Coworkers and even bosses will bend to your will if you use this method consistently. Consistency is the key. Send a clear signal that you cannot be swayed by reason and that you'll never stop being loud and obnoxious until you get your way. This method is effective because the law prevents people from killing you and there's no other practical way to make you stop... After you get your way, turn instantly into the sweetest person your victim has ever seen... This widens the gap between the experience people have when they satisfy you and the experience they have when they don't."

"Is it likely that the perpetual flow of rumors has suddenly stopped just at the time when the odds are highest that something might actually happen? Or is it more likely that your manager knows the news is so bad that the slightest whiff of the truth will make the employees less productive than a truckload of Chihuahua? I've done extensive studies of Chihuahua work habits and discovered that a truckload of Chihuahuas is the least productive organizational size."

"Is there any way this 'collapse of civilization' thing could affect me, personally?"

"It could be said that the dishes used human beings in a symbiotic relationship, convincing us through their usefulness to make new dishes."

"It fascinates me that there are people like that, and they're allowed to vote."

"It does represent a new way of living in the valley. It's not new in America. We're just catching up with the rest of the country in terms of a vertical lifestyle."

"It doesn't take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation."

"It has no real financial impact on me. And I'm not the angry-getting type. If they prorated my subscription fee, I think they owe me 85 cents or something like that."

"It is a fairly centralized downtown location, central to the proposed condos. It won't necessarily be convenient for everybody, though. At the end of the day, somebody may have to get into his car to go grocery shopping."

"It helps to see the world as math and not magic."

"It is a human tendency to become what you attack."

"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."

"It is better for your career to do nothing, than to do something and attract criticism."

"it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing."

"It is my duty... nay, my privilege... nay, just a guilty pleasure to inform you that you are wearing women's clothing."

"It's funny to me that I have to prove to the banks that I'M honest."

"It?s surprising how uncommon common sense is."

"It's just three minutes in the microwave, it's hand held, it works with a busy lifestyle,"

"I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that huge companies like us can't compete against small, nimble companies. The good news is that at this rate we'll be the smallest company around."

"It's illegal and immoral to slay your enemies, but if you eat nutritious food and outlive them, you can still dance on their graves. There's nothing illegal or immoral about dancing."

"I've always defined myself not as a cartoonist , but as an entrepreneur. That was true before I tried cartooning. I always imagined cartooning would be how I got my seed capital. I always thought my other businesses would be the less dominant part of my life."

"I've had a great time... I don't get to work with this many smart people all at the same time on one cool thing very often."

"I've got goosebumps! Or some other strange growth..."

"Job Interviews ? Luckily for managers everywhere, the most dreaded experience in the life of any employee is the job interview. Most employees prefer years of abuse over job interviews. There is a sort of informal cartel agreement among all companies to make the interview process as humiliating and degrading as possible. That keeps employees from job-hopping."

"Knowing The Enemy ? Before you can defeat the competition, first you must defect your own company."

"Just out of curiosity, how often does an asteroid crash into an exercise machine?"

"Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn't mean I can't be the first."

"I've heard stories of (salmon) being caught further offshore than they normally would (be) ? on tuna jigs."

"Lately... the Peter Principle has given way to the Dilbert Principle. The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."

"Leader Survival Skills ? The most important skill for any leader is the ability to take credit for things that happen on their own. In primitive times, tribal chieftains would claim credit for the change in seasons and the fact that wood floats. They had the great advantage of the ignorance of the masses working in their favor. But television had largely filled the 'knowledge gap', so the modern leader must take credit for more subtle happenings. For example, if the company accountants predict that profits are going up because of a change in international currency rates, the good leader will create a company-wide 'Quality Initiative', thus having a program in place to take credit for the profit increase."

"Keep meetings short. Get to the point and get on. Make it clear that brevity and clarity are prized. Respectfully interrupt people who talk too long without getting to the point. At first it will seem rude. Eventually it gives everybody permission to the same. Be efficient in little things. For example, rather than have some Byzantine process for doling out office supplies, add $25 a month to each employee's paycheck as a 'supply stipend' and let employees buy whatever they need from their local store. If they spend less, they keep the difference. If you create an internal memo with a typo, just line it out and send it. Never reprint it. Better yet, stick with email."

"Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams."

"Let's give up now and form an agrarian society!"

"Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt."

"Look around your company and see how many activities are at least one level removed from something that improves either the effectiveness of the people or the quality of the product. When I refer to 'product' I mean the entire product experience from the customer's perspective, including the delivery, image and channel. Any activity that is one level removed from your people or your product will ultimately fail or have little benefit... If you're talking to a customer, that's fundamental. But if you're talking about customers, you're probably one level removed."

"Losers have goals. Winners have systems."

"Management Consultants ? If the employees of your company are incompetent, you might want to get some consultants. A consultant is a person who takes your money and annoys your employees while tirelessly searching for ways to extend the consulting contract. Consultants will hold a seemingly endless series of meetings to test various hypotheses and assumptions. These exercises are a vital step toward tricking managers into revealing the recommendation that is most likely to generate repeat consulting business... Consultants will ultimately recommend that you do whatever you're not doing now. Centralize whatever is decentralized. Flatten whatever is vertical. Diversify whatever is concentrated and divest everything that is not 'core' to the business. You'll hardly ever find a consultant who recommends that you keep everything the same and stop wasting money on consultants... Instead they'll look for ways to improve to 'strategy' and the 'process'... Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to be regular employees at your company. Consultants will return your calls, because it's billable time to them. Consultants eventually leave, which makes them excellent scapegoats for major management blunders."

"Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it as a human? Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean, love is love."

"Management By Shaking The Box ? What may seem like random management changes is actually a clever strategy to reduce salary costs by making you so stressed that you quit."

"Man is a game playing animal and a computer is another way to play games"

"Market Segmentation ? Market segmentation might sound like a complicated thing, but it's the same process you used as a child to select players for a team. Each potential player is evaluated on objective characteristics, such as speed, skill and power. If those characteristics don't produce a conclusive choice, then the group is further segmented by their levels of acne and popularity. The children who rate high in the preferred characteristics are placed in the 'team segment' and those who rate lowest become the market segment most likely to grow up and purchase inflatable women. It's that simple."

"Managers are obsessed with the 'big picture'... I think the big picture is hiding in the details. It's in the clothes, the office supplies, the casual comments and the coffee. I'm all for working on the big picture, if your know where to find it."

"Manipulate The Media ? Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same. Contrary to what you might believe, the quotes you see in news stories are rarely what was actually said and rarely in the original context. Most quotes are engineered by the writers to support whatever notion they had before the story. Avoid any mention of a name or topic that you wouldn't want to see yourself misquoted about... All news stories focus on something that is very good or very bad. Help the writer determine what is very good about your situation; otherwise the default story is generally about something that is very bad."

"Managers are like cats in a litter box. They instinctively shuffle things around to conceal what they've done."

"Marketing in History ? Airline Survey (1920). If you had to travel a long distance, would you rather: (a) Drive a car; (b) Take a train; (c) Allow yourself to be strapped into a huge metal container that weighs more than your house and be propelled through space by exploding chemicals while knowing that any one of a thousand different human, mechanical or weather problems would you to be incinerated in a spectacular ball of flame? If you answered (c) would you mind if we stomped on your luggage and sent it to another city?"

"Men want sex. If men ruled the world, they could get sex anywhere, anytime. Restaurants would give you sex instead of breath mints on the way out. Gas stations would give sex with every fill-up. Banks would give sex to anyone who opened a checking account."

"Meetings ? If you're new to the business world, you might mistakenly think that meetings are a boring, sadistic hell, populated by galactic-level morons. I had that same misperception when I joined the working world. Now I understand that meetings are a type of performance art, with each actor taking on one of these challenging roles: Master of the Obvious; Well-Intentioned Sadist; Whining Martyr Rumbling Men; Sleeper."

"Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there."

"Men believe value is created by accomplishment, and they have objectives for the women in their lives. If a woman meets the objectives, he assumes she loves him. If she fails to meet the objectives, he will assume she does not love him. The man assumes that if the woman loved him she would have tried harder and he always believes his objectives for her are reasonable."

"Methods for predicting the future: 1) read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls... collectively known as nutty methods; 2) put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer... commonly referred to as a complete waste of time."