Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 28, 2008

Zonker can’t, either.

Don’t try kid, your better off that way..

“can’t touch dat”

margueritem says: Zonker can’t, either. Yea, I agree! lols! Zonker could not figure that out.

Zonker, dude, come down first, then give advice…

Just remember, don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

Unfortunately, I think I do understand Zonker. OK, maybe not as an “Elite waiter”, but too often managers look only at what an employee costs, and never at what that person produces, both in measurable terms and in the less easily measured. Some years ago, companies did much the same by hiring MBAs and figuring they would be effective, regardless of whether or not they knew what the company produced and how. Didn’t work very well then, and won’t work too well now.

It makes more sense coming from Zonker than an assistant manager. This is exactly why Safeway stopped putting hire dates on peoples name tags. A store full of apprentice employees with name tags that say “Serving you since June” doesn’t speak well for the Company or the Union.

Why study? The more you study, the more you know. The more you know, the more you can forget. The more you can forget, the more you do forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why study?

as circuit city has very graphically shown since the termination of their highest paid floor people in spring of 2007. 18+ quarters of downward trending sales and they are in a much weaker position than they were then.

Ummm… how can Circuit City have posted more than 18 quarters since 2007? Does that have anything to do with the quality of the people they KEPT?

Be as good as you can and save as much as you can while you’re working. In the 20’s or 30’s, Bruno Labate was the principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic under the famous conductor Otto Klemperer, and had a lucrative teaching and concert career as well. Klemperer was infamous for delivering long lectures during rehearsals about the musicological significance of the composition being rehearsed. After one of these talks had been going for some time, Bruno Labate stood up, shook his fist and said, “Doctor Klemps, you talka too much.” When asked later whether he wasn’t afraid to say such a thing to such a famous conductor, Labate replied, “I got seventy-five thousand dollars in the bank, I no get scare.”

thats 18+ quarters since spring of 2007.

“Why study? The more you study, the more you know. The more you know, the more you can forget. The more you can forget, the more you do forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why study?”

I forgot I learned this poem about 45 yrs ago!