Business Humour

Feeling credit crunched? In need of a little humour? We can help...

Enjoy Dilbert... the office worker (imagined by Scott Adams) who gave us these words of wisdom:

If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish he will buy an ugly hat. And if you talk about fish to a starving man then you are a consultant.

If you spend all of your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.

Technical people respond to questions in three ways: It is technically impossible (meaning: I don't feel like doing it); It depends (meaning: abandon all hope of a useful answer); The data bits are flexed through a collectimizer which strips the flow-gate arrays into virtual message elements (meaning: I don't know).

There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance.

In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you see a bright light and dead relatives beckoning.

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

Most problems go away if you just wait long enough. It might look like I'm standing motionless but I'm actively waiting for our problems to go away. I don't know why this works but it does.

Find out more about Dilbert or share your thoughts on the funny side of office life.

And finally...

A shepherd is herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and says to the shepherd:

"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man, who is obviously a yuppie, then turns to his peaceful, grazing flock and calmly answers, "OK, why not?"

So the yuppie parks his car, whips out his Netbook, surfs the Internet and finds a NASA site. Then, using the Web site, he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system and scans the area.

Next he opens up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas and after a few minutes he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturised printer.

Eventually he turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep."

"That's correct," says the shepherd "you can take one of the sheep."

He watches as the young man selects one of the animals and bundles it into his car and says: "Hold on a minute, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?"

"OK, why not," answers the young man.

"That's easy," says the shepherd "you're a consultant."

"That's spot on!" says the yuppie, clearly amazed, "But how did you guess that?"

"There was no guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You turned up here, even though nobody called you. You expect to get paid to give me an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't even know a thing about my business. Now give me back my dog."