Model Motivation
On employee bulletin board: “In case of fire, flee the building with the same reckless abandon that occurs each day at quitting time.”
Doctrine of Faith
If you don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, you ought to be here five minutes before quitting time! –Sign in a San Francisco wholesale florist shop.
Tardiness Explained
Albert I. Furth, former editor of Fortune, used to explain his lateness in answering his correspondence by remarking, “Every six months my secretary comes in and turns the compost on my desk.”
Any Opportunity
You know business is bad when you start treating wrong numbers like solid sales prospects.
How to Know When It’s Time to Move
You know it’s time to move to another job when some mornings you’d rather go to the dentist and have a root canal than go to work.
Real Fatigue
He is most fatigued who knows not what to do.
Cultural Exchange
When we were borrowing customs from other cultures, who passed up the siesta?
The Brain
The brain is an organ that starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
Enthusiastic Type
Did you ever notice that when you run into a man with real enthusiasm for hard work, he turns out to be your boss?
The Active and the Passive
There are those who grab hold of life and those who are out to lunch. A man was driving on a lonely road one summer day. He saw a car with a flat tire pulled over on the shoulder of the road. A woman was standing next to the car and looking down in dismay at the flat tire. The man decided to pull over and play the Good Samaritan. He grew hot and sweaty and dirty in the hot sun as he changed the tire. The woman was watching him and when he was finished she said, “Be sure and let the jack down easily now, because my husband is sleeping in the back seat of the car!”
Priorities for Society
An excellent plumber is infinitely more valuable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because it is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy; neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. –John Garner
Strange Interlude
A vacation is that brief period of time between trying to get ahead so you can leave and trying to catch up when you get back.
The Fruit of Hard Work
A management consultant makes the following observation: “Be the first in the office every morning, be the last to leave every night, never take a day off, slave through the lunch hour, and the inevitable day will come when the boss will summon you to his office and say, ‘I’ve been watching your work very carefully, Jackson. Just what the devil are you up to, anyhow?’”