MURPHY'S LAWS ON WORK

• A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.
• Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
• The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
• You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
• Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
• Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested in, and say nothing about the other.
• When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
• If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
• There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
• Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said there would be so many.
• Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back. This is what I'm doing wrong.
• Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
• Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
• To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.
• Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing.
• Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
• The last person that quit or was fired will be the one held responsible for everything that goes wrong - until the next person quits or is fired.
• There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is always enough time to do it over.
• The more pretentious a corporate name, the smaller the organization. For instance, The Murphy Center for Codification of Human and Organizational Law, contrasted to IBM, GM, AT&T ...).
• If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
• You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
• People are always available for work in the past tense.
• If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
• At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
• When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
• You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
• No one gets sick on Wednesdays.
• When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
• The longer the title, the less important the job.
• Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.
• An "acceptable" level of employment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
• Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
• All vacations and holidays create problems, except for one's own.
• Success is just a matter of luck, just ask any failure.