Nonsense seems to have become the official language of business. Here is a sampling of Dilbertisms and how conversations between engineers and their coworkers are often lost in translation.

Dilbertisms
A while back, a magazine ran a Dilbert quotes contest asking for real internal-company quotes that, we think, shed some light on what is meant by the workplace maxim we’ve all come to know as an absolute truth: “Dilbert is a documentary.”

These were some of the replies (via FrontierNet.net):

• “What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.” (Shipping firm)

• “Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them.” (R&D supervisor, multinational manufacturing conglomerate corporation)

• “One day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, ‘If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!’” (New business manager, greeting-card manufacturer)

• “E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.” (Accounting manager, electric boat company)

• “As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.” (Computer technology corporation)

What They Say vs. What They Mean
There are terms and phrases that new employees should understand before taking co-workers’ comments seriously. A few of the top Engineer’s Terms and Expressions (via Ahajokes.com) explain what co-workers say versus what they mean:

• Years of development. (One finally worked.)

• All new. (Parts are not interchangeable with previous design.)

• Energy saving. (Achieved when the power switch is off)

• No maintenance. (Impossible to fix)

• A number of different approaches are being tried. (We are still guessing at this point.)

• It is in process. (It is wrapped in so much red tape that the situation is completely hopeless.)

• We will look into it. (Forget it! We have enough problems already.)

• What’s your interpretation? (We can’t wait to hear your bull.)

• We are following the standard. (That’s the way we have always done it.)

• Test results were extremely gratifying! (Unbelievable … it actually worked!)

He’s Got “The Knack”
As a child, he took apart the TV and made a ham radio. Will he be normal?

A few more Dilbertisms, from All Great Quotes:

• “Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.”

• “Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company.”

• “An optimist is simply a pessimist with no job experience.”

• “Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.”

• “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).”

• “Change is good. You go first.”