Also see Business Humor, Business and Finance Humor.
- Accomplishing the impossible means only the boss will add it to your regular duties. (Doug Larson)
- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
- At some time in the life cycle of every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
- A banker lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
- Blacksmiths forge ahead
- Can I trade this job for what's behind door #2?
- Chaos, panic, and disorder - my job is done here.
- A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
- A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.
- A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
- Do not underestimate your abilities. That is your boss's job.
- A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. (Frank Lloyd Wright)
- Employee to company lawyer: "I'm working on a top secret military project. My boss hired some North Elbonians to help me. They're communists. If I give them any information, I could be guilty of treason. I could be executed. Can you help?"
Lawyer: "Sure. What would I have to do - pull a lever?"
- Employer: "I'm looking for a part time Girl-Friday. Are you interested?"
Applicant: "No, thanks. I'm all girl seven days a week!"
- Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
- An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.
- The first person to make a mountain out of a molehill was a real estate agent.
- The first thing a new employee should do on the job is learn to recognize his boss' voice on the phone. (Martin Buxbaum)
- Geologists are caught between a rock and a hard place
- Geologists are fault finders.
- Geologists have sedimentary value.
- Go the extra mile - It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker.
- How do I set a laser printer to stun?
- I can't be fired. Slaves are sold!
- I cna ytpe 300 wrods pre mniuet!
- I fired my masseuse today. She rubbed me the wrong way.
- I have a degree in liberal arts. Do you want fries with that?
- I think, therefore I am overqualified.
- I work hard because millions on welfare depend upon me.
- If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
- If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research.
- If work is so terrific, why do they have to pay you to do it?
- I'm just working here until a good fast-food job opens up.
- Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it.
- It's a thankless job but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.
- It's not hard to meet expenses, they're everywhere.
- It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted. (Catherine O'Hara)
- A job is nice but it interferes with my life.
- The less you bother me, the sooner we'll get results.
- Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their products as they do advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it. (Will Rogers)
- The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts.
- Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.
- A memorandum is not written to inform the reader but to protect the writer. (Dean Acheson)
- Of course I don't look busy...I did it right the first time!
- Old anthropologists never die, they just become history.
- Old bosses never die, much as you want them to.
- Old bureaucrats never die, they just waste away.
- Old cashiers never die, they just check out.
- Old chemists never die, they just fail to react.
- Old janitors never die, they just kick the bucket.
- Old plumbers never die, they just go down the drain.
- Old real estate agents never die, they just grow listless.
- Old salesmen never die, they just go out of commission.
- Old steal makers never die, they just lose their temper.
- Old watchmakers never die, they just wind down.
- On Mondays, I rise and whine.
- One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. (Bertrand Russell)
- Organized people are just people who are too lazy to look for things
- People who do the world's real work don't usually wear ties.
- People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. (Ogden Nash)
- Plumbers go with the flow.
- Plumbers have the best connections.
- Plumbers repair what your husband fixed.
- Procrastination on your part does not create an emergency on my part.
- The rat race is over - the rats won!
- A real estate agent was the first person to make a mountain out of a molehill.
- Research is the act of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
- Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings - they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
- Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
- Science may never come up with a better office communications system than the coffee break.
- Scientists keep a close 'ion' their equipment.
- Sign in a store window: We buy old furniture - We sell antiques
- Sign reception room desk: We shoot every third salesman, and the second one just left.
- Sign posted in a customer service department:
Suppose we refund your money,
send you another one without charge,
close the store, and have the manager shot.
Would THAT be satisfactory?!
- The status of a temp is somewhere between that of a security guard and the crud behind the refrigerator (Scott Adams).
- There's a fine line between marketing and grand theft. (Scott Adams)
- There's no job too simple for me to complicate.
- They earned a precarious living by taking in one another's washing.
- This isn't a desk. It's a landfill!
- This isn't an office - It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.
- A tidy desk is the sign of a sick mind.
- A train engineer has a one track mind
- The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
- Variety may be the spice of life, but monotony provides the groceries.
- We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
- When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs
- Work harder!! Millions on welfare are depending on you.
- You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising budget is big enough. (Ed Rollins)
- You can have it right or you can have it now, but you can't have it right now.
- You should not confuse your career with your life.
Hardly Working
- All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and higher pay for not getting it done.
- Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
- Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work. (Al Capp)
- Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
- Better days are coming. They're called Saturday and Sunday.
- A committee is a body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
- A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. (Sir Barnett Cocks)
- Doing nothing is tiring because you can't stop to rest.
- Doing the job right the first time gets the job done. Doing the job wrong 14 times gives you job security.
- Don't rush me. I'm waiting for the last minute.
- For maximum attention, nothing beats a good mistake.
- Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
- I always arrive late to work, but I make up for it by leaving early.
- I do my work at the same time each day - the last minute!
- I have plenty of talent and vision. I just don't care.
- I love deadlines - especially the swooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.
- I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted a salary.
- I used to be a banker...but I lost interest.
- If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
- It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work. (E. F. Schumacher)
- It sure does make the day long when you get to work on time!
- Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.
- A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
- The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.
- Nothing makes me more productive than the last minute.
- Old salesmen never die, they just go out of commission.
- Old sewage workers never die, they just waste away.
- The only thing wrong with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.
- Sign on a plumber's truck: We repair what your husband fixed.
- The stock exchange uses roamin' numerals.
- There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. (Mary Little)
- Too many people are ready to carry the stool when the piano needs to be moved.
- We pretend to work because they pretend to pay us.
- Who says nothing is impossible. I've been doing nothing for years.
- The world is full of willing people.
Some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
Management
- By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. (Robert Frost)
- Congratulations on your promotion.
Before you go, would you like to take this knife out of my back.
You'll probably need it again.
- The difference between the Pope and your boss is that the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
- Everyone rises to their level of incompetence. (Dr. Lawrence J. Peter - The Peter Principle)
- The first myth of management is that it exists.
- The Golden Rule of Bureaucracy: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
- I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
- If at first you don't succeed - try management.
- It's lonely at the top, but you eat better.
- I've been promoted to middle management. I never thought I'd sink so low. (Tim Gould)
- The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate you away from those who are still undecided. (Casey Stengal)
- Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. (Kin Hubbard)
- Management expands to meet the needs of management.
- Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done. (Peter F. Drucker)
- Office manager to employees:
Don't think of me as a boss. Think of me as a friend who is always right.
- Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to get along without it.
- When the bosses talk about improving productivity they are never talking about themselves.
- When working for British Telecom a few years back, I was given a brown envelope by a manager who asked me to fax it to regional headquarters. When I started to open it I was told: "Mustn't open, the contents are confidential - just fax it."
Witty Responses If You Are Caught Sleeping
- They told me at the blood bank this might happen.
- This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in the last time management course you sent me to.
- Whew! Guess I left the top off the liquid paper
- I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!
- This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people!
- I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work-related stress. Are you discriminatory towards people who practice Yoga?
- Darn! Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem.
- The coffee machine is broke...
- Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot.
- Boy, that cold medicine I took last night just won't wear off!
- Ah, the unique and unpredictable circadian rhythms of the workaholic!
- Amen
Motivational Posters You'll Never See
- If you do a good job and work hard, you may get a job with a better company someday.
- It's only unethical if you get caught.
- We put the "k" in "kwality"
- A person who smiles in the face of adversity probably has a scapegoat.
- We make great money! We have great benefits! We do no work! We are union members!
- 2 days without a Human Rights Violation!
- Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done.
Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.
- TEAMWORK...means never having to take all the blame yourself.
- Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.
- Aim Low, Reach Your Goals, Avoid Disappointment.
- If at first you don't succeed - try management.
- Hang in there: Retirement is only 30 years away!
- Go the extra mile - It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker.
- Pride, commitment, teamwork - words we use to get you to work for free.
- There are two kinds of people: people who like their jobs, and people who don't work here anymore.
Accountants
- Accountant: anyone who can add the same column of figures five times in a row and come up with five different tax deductions.
- Accountants are top dollar!
- An accountant is a well-balanced person!
- Accountant's Maxim: When you make a mistake of adding the date to the right side of the accounting statement, you must add it to the left side too.
- Accountants work their assets off!
- C.P.A. - Certified Pain in the A**!
- Economists are people who work with numbers but don't have the personality to be accountants.
- I'm an accountant...not a magician!
- Old accountants never die, they just depreciate.
- Old accountants never die, they just lose their balance.
- Old accountants never die, they just lose their figures.
- What do accountants suffer from that ordinary people don't?
Depreciation.
- What's the definition of a good tax accountant?
Someone who has a loophole named after him.
- You can count on an accountant.
What is Two and Two?
A business man was interviewing applicants for the position of divisional manager. He devised a test to select the most suitable person for the job. He asked each applicant, "What is two and two?"
The first interviewee was a journalist. His answer was "Twenty-two."
The second applicant was an engineer. He pulled out a slide rule and showed the answer to be between 3.999 and 4.001.
The next person was a lawyer. He stated that in the case of Jenkins v Brown, two and two was proven to be four.
The last applicant was an accountant. The business man asked him, "How much is two and two?" The accountant got up from his chair, went over to the door and closed it then came back and sat down. He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice..."How much do you want it to be?"
He got the job.