1.Never give me urgent work early in the day. In fact, make it a rule to wait until 4.00pm and then give it to me. I am always enthusiastic about the challenge of a tight deadline.

2.If it really is a very urgent job, always interrupt me every 10 minutes to ask how it's going - this is very helpful. Even better, hover over me and offer helpful advice as I work.

3.Whenever you leave the office during the day, never tell me or anyone else where you're going. That will give me a chance to be creative when anyone asks where you are.

4.If you should encounter me with my arms full of papers, boxes, etc., never open the door for me. I am l training myself how to function as a paraplegic in the event that should ever suffer an accident whereby I lose all use of my limbs.

5.If you give me more than one job to do, never tell me their order of priority. I will always know - I am psychic.

6.Do please keep me working late, whenever practicable. I love this office and have nowhere else to go, nor anything useful to do in my spare time. In fact, I have no life beyond work.

7.If you should happen to be pleased with any work I've done for you, always keep it secret. I wouldn't want it to get out and possibly have an influence on my chances of a raise, or promotion.

8.On the other hand, if you are displeased with any of my work, do tell everyone. I recognise it's desirable to have a single scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in the office and clearly I'm best qualified for that key role.

9.Whenever you correct my typed copy, do show the sillier mistakes to other staff. It boosts my morale to feel that I can contribute to the happiness and well-being of my colleagues.

10.If you are in possession of special written instructions for doing any particular job, never pass them on to me at the outset. In fact, save them until I've nearly finished - I might get confused, otherwise.

11.Never give me any information about changes in management, procedures, etc. until it is absolutely unavoidable. Preferably, make sure everyone else knows first so that I don't get ideas above my station. Anyway, I love surprises.

12.Never introduce me to any new people I see you with. I know I have no right to preferential treatment in this regard because, in the corporate food chain, I am but plankton. Should you refer to these people subsequently, no doubt I will be able to identify them individually using my powers of deduction.

13.Do treat me in a seemingly overbearing, rude, humiliating and brutal way in public. Everyone fully understands this is not your true intent; rather, it is an essential facet of your popular, forthright management style.

14.The only time you might think about being nice to me is when the job I'm doing for you could be crucial to your keeping your job - but even then it's not essential.

15.Do share all your little problems with me. I fully sympathise, and in a way it gives me some comfort to know that there is someone less fortunate than me. I feel especially sorry for you when you go on repeating the story about having to pay so much tax on the bonus you receive for being such a good manager.

16.Do wait until my yearly review and then tell me what my objectives should have been, in retrospect. I'm always happy with a mediocre performance rating with no more than a cost-of-living increase. I'm not here for the money, anyway.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

In modern education and government, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: -

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing Riders.

3. Threatening the horse with termination.

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses.

6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Reclassifying the dead horse as "living, impaired".

8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.

10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.

11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

12. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.

13. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

14. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position

It's the first day of school in Houston and the teacher thought she'd get to know the kids by asking them their name and what their father does for a living.

The first little girl says: "My name is Mary and my daddy is a postman."

The next little boy says: "I'm Andy and my Dad is a mechanic."

Then one little boy says: "My name is Jimmy and my father is a striptease dancer in a cabaret for gay men."

The teacher gasps and quickly changes the subject, but later in the school yard the teacher approaches Jimmy privately and asks if it was really true that his Dad dances nude in a gay bar.

He blushed and said, "I'm sorry but my dad is an auditor for KPMG and I was just too embarrassed to say so."

Apparently this is based on a true incident.
A quality management consultant was visiting a small and somewhat antiquated English manufacturing company, to advise on improving general operating efficiency.
The advisor was reviewing a particular daily report which dealt with aspects of productivity, absentee rates, machine failure, down-time, etc.
The report was completed manually onto a photocopied proforma that was several generations away from the original master-copy, so its headings and descriptions were quite difficult to understand.
The photocopied forms were particularly fuzzy at the top-right corner, where a small box had a heading that was not clear at all.
The advisor was interested to note that the figure '0' had been written in every daily report for the past year.
On questioning the members of staff who completed the report, they told him that they always put a zero in that box, and when he asked them why they looked at each other blankly.
"Hmmm.., I'm not sure about that," they each said, "I guess we've just always done it that way."
Intrigued, the consultant visited the archives to see if he could find a clearer form, to discover what was originally being reported and whether it actually held any significance.
When he found the old reports, he saw that the zero return had continued uninterrupted for as far back as the records extended - at least the past thirty years - but none of the forms was any clearer than those presently in use.
A little frustrated, he packed away the old papers and turned to leave the room, but something caught his eye.
In another box he noticed a folder, promisingly titled 'master forms'.
Sure enough inside it he found the original daily report proforma master-copy, in pristine condition.
In the top right corner was the mysterious box, with the heading clearly shown ......
'Number of Air Raids Today'

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by materials researchers at IPRT/ISU. The new element, tentatively named Administratium, has no protons or electrons, and thus has an atomic weight of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons, and 111 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together in a nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of particles called morons.

Since it has no electrons, Administratium is totally inert. However, it can be detected chemically, since it impedes every reaction it comes into contact with. According to its discovers, a tiny amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over four days to complete; the normal reaction time is less than one second.

Administratium has a normal half life of approximately three years, at which time it does not actually decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which neutrons, vice neutrons, and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Studies have shown that the atomic mass usually increases after each reorganization.

Research at other laboratories indicates that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points, such as governmental agencies, large corporations, and universities. It is always found in the newest, best appointed and best maintained buildings.

Scientists point out that Administratium is known to be toxic at any level of concentration and can easily destroy any productive reactions where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are being made to determine how Administratium can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results to date are not promising.

A steel company, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO. The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business. He asked the guy, "How much money do you make a week?"

A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, "I make £400 a week. Why?"

The CEO said, "Wait right here."

He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes and handed the guy £1,600 in cash and said, "Here's four weeks' pay. Now GET OUT and don't come back."

Feeling pretty good about himself the CEO looked around the room and asked, "Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?"

From across the room a voice said, "Pizza delivery guy from Domino's."

Following a poor first-half year performance the board of Company X tasked a senior manager to investigate what was happening on the factory floor, since the directors believed poor productivity was at the root of the problem.
While walking around the plant, the investigating manager came upon a large warehouse area where a man stood next to a pillar.
The manager introduced himself as the person investigating performance on the factory floor, appointed by the board, and then asked the man by the pillar what he was doing.
"It's my job," replied the man, "I was told to stand by this pillar." The investigator thanked the man for his cooperation and encouraged him to keep up the good work.
The investigator next walked into a large packing area, where he saw another man standing next to a pillar.
The investigator again introduced himself and asked the man what he was doing.
"I've been told to stand by this pillar, so that's what I do." said the man. Two weeks later the investigator completed his report and duly presented his findings to the board, who held a brief meeting to decide remedial action.
The board called the investigator back into the room, thanked him for his work, and then instructed him to sack one of the men he'd found standing by pillars, since obviously this was a duplication of effort.

I have just submitted my tax return online - what a relief to get it out of the way. I just hope that, being as accurate as I could make it, it will be acceptable.

A friend of mine has not been so lucky. HMRC returned his paper tax return saying that he had answered one of the questions incorrectly.

In response to the question "Do you have any dependants?", he wrote:-

2.1 million illegal immigrants

1.1 million crackheads

4.4 million unemployable scroungers

90,000 criminals in over 85 prisons

plus 649 self serving lying ponces in our Parliament and the entire European Commission

HMRC stated that the response he gave was unacceptable.

He's just written back to them to ask: "Who did I miss out ?"

404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located:

ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the "adminisphere" are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. This is often affiliated with the dreaded "administrivia" needless paperwork and processes:

ASSMOSIS: The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato

OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realise that you've just made a BIG mistake (e.g. you've hit 'reply all')

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the cr*p out of an electronic device to get it to work again:

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see that's going on. (This also applies to applause from a promotion because there may be cake.)

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, cr*ps on everything, and then leaves.

SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.

What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a "home business":

STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny:

TESTICULATING: Waving your arms around and talking Bollocks.

Interviewer: What is your biggest weakness?

Candidate: I'd have to say honesty.

Interviewer: I don't really see honesty as a weakness.

Candidate: I don't really give a fuck what you think.

1. You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.

2. You decide to re-org your family into a "team-based organization."

3. You refer to dating as test marketing.

4. You can spell "paradigm."

5. You actually know what a paradigm is.

6. You understand your airline's fare structure.

7. You write executive summaries on your love letters.

8. Your Valentine's Day cards have bullet points.

9. You think that it's actually efficient to write a ten page presentation with six other people you don't know.

10. You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review.

11. You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities".

12. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.

13. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed to "in debt."

14. You end every argument by saying "let's talk about this off-line".

15. You can explain to somebody the difference between "re-engineering," "down-sizing," "right-sizing," and "firing people."

16. You actually believe your explanation in number 15.

17. You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.

18. You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost."

19. You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."

20. You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.

21. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.

22. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.

23. You account for tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.

24. You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.

25. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.

26. Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.

27. You use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing.

28. You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.

29. You give constructive feedback to your dog.