Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 27, 2019

Obviously, an MBA from Hahvahd Business School!

It’s the thing you do the day before you retire.

If only . . .

In any organization, people will rise to their level of incompetence, and remain there!

The 0th Commandment – Better out than in!

Could not think of a better thing to do with that stack of waste of time my self!

If were only that easy.

The Peter Principle in action.

Every man’s dream. And then REALITY strikes.

Is this like jumping on a mattress?

I wish my problems could be solved by jumping on them.

So that’s how they do it

Its a wormhole, made by a middle management worm.

Can’t you store it on the cloud and hope it rains?

Anybody remember that mythological tale that using computers would reduce the paper piles to nothing??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sure Boss, I’ll get right on it…

Is that how cartoon strips are created?

Easier to switch basket labels, isn’t it?

I had a job once in the late ’60s manually separating huge computer production data printouts by department. The process was already a few days behind when I was dropped into it, and I fell further back. Then, returning from a 3 day weekend, I found I was now a week in arears. So I threw out 7 days worth of printouts and was caught up! No one ever complained!

IN

OUT

Shake it all about.

I once worked for a place where one day every manager got brand new In and Out boxes. I wasn’t a manager, but I wanted new boxes also. So, I took some paper and made two labels, “In” and “Out”. I taped them to opposite sides of my trash can, put it on the corner of my desk, and called it the “self-emptying In and Out box.” The idea was that I would leave the “In” side facing out during the day, turn it around when I left at night, and in the morning, the good office fairies would have magically taken care of all my paperwork. My boss saw it and immediately wanted one just like it.

Who still has an “In” box?

“Action passed is action completed.”

Another successful graduate of Trump University.

that’s taking middle management to an extreme – however, if the lower echelon cannot communicate with the upper one, then the upper won’t know how self-serving the middle guy is – this happens too often in business.

which is why so many middle managers are being laid off!

Work under pressure.

It doesn’t make sense how the papers got to the other bin. Oh yeah, it’s a comic.

I followed the “new list every day” technique for a little while: When something comes up that needs doing (except a true crisis), it just gets written at the bottom (or on the back) of today’s list and will be handled in due course. You always work on whatever is at the top of the list. Every morning, the first thing you do is convert yesterday’s list into today’s list, and you do that by prioritizing whatever isn’t already done.

There are nuances: You can keep a list of “I’ll never get to it” tasks and either hand them up to management “I need more help here!” or down to a subordinate “I’m sure you can handle this without my input.” You can double-code items with urgency and importance values, usually converting yesterday’s “important” things into a higher priority on today’s list. But the key feature is: “The morning list never gets longer than one sheet of paper!” with the result that things with low priority simply evaporate off the bottom of your daily list.

If it were only that easy…:)

I like it! But most of my work is not with paper, it is in the computer. I don’t think my computer will react favorably if I jump on top of it!

Now that is cartoon physics.

Me to

I tried to get one of those In Boxes, once.

But, they were just too Expensive, so the boss refused to pay for it.

IN = “things that solve themselves with the passage of time” OUT = “things that have solved themselves with the passage of time”…

Geez, I wish I’d thought of that. It certainly would have made work a lot more pleasant.