Alas, there are a few things that one simply does not like to hear at work. In this I list my own personal ‘favourites’… though this no doubt reveals far more about me than about the people who say them!

I realise that this is a somewhat cynical piece of writing if looked at in such a way… so do note that it is not to be taken totally seriously (unlike every single other article I have ever published)

You’ve got to think outside the box.

Firstly, I’m not in a box… I don’t think I ever have been. Secondly, do employers really want their teams to think controversially and undertake new, innovative and untested approaches to their jobs at all times? I don’t think so; it would be pure chaos if they did! “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!”

Why would I need to “think outside the box” to calculate a percentage? Or am I just being narrow minded?

There’s no “I” in team.

No there isn’t, but there is no room for a “team” around a single desk to perform some mundane task that one person could finish in five minutes. Naturally, every member must contribute, add their penny’s worth; slow things down. Teams are great for some things, but at other times the individual should be left alone to do the job. But this gem of wisdom seems not to be included in the latest edition of “Management 101”.

Work hard, play hard.

I have cunningly conditioned my mind to not hear this sentence, but to instead hear “work the bare minimum so that you can earn enough money to enjoy the non-working hours of your life”. This conditioning is no small feat, but the irritation I feel when I notice that they assume I fully accept their “live to work” corporate attitude… well, better to just hear something different!

You can achieve anything with the right attitude.

No you cannot. You can never achieve the impossible, that’s why it’s called the impossible. I am not a pessimist, nor do I give up on a task easily; so when I say “it can’t be done” then I actually mean exactly that. It is not a question of attitude. A positive attitude, for example, won’t do much to fix a smashed computer screen or a broken printer! There is a fine distinction between pessimist and realist; I consider myself to belong in the latter category.

Can I borrow your stapler?

Why? Don’t you have your own? Every time I lend you my stapler I lose it and have to go all the way to the basement to get another from the stockroom. Not this time… No you can’t, so go and get your own!

You get out what you put in…

So there is absolutely no net gain for me then, is there. Why would I bother then? If I get out exactly what I put in would I not have been better served saving my time? Putting in nothing to get nothing is the same thing as putting in a pound to get a pound. What a peculiar thing to say to a bored worker!

It was lucky you knew how to do all that…

No, that wasn’t luck; that was the result of hours and hours of patient unravelling of the mess I inherited from some other department. The complicated mathematical treatment comes from years of training and the quality of the writing and clarity of the explanation comes from a great love of reading and a thousand essays worth of practice (over the years).

It was not luck. To highlight: “People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have” (Anne Tyler).

I finish with one of my favourite quotes:  “Where facts are few, experts are many!” (Donald R Gannon)