Management Quotes

"If you have that, the world is your walrus."

"I've got ears like a hawk."

"He looks like he's three sheep in the wind."

"I am going to let you move around more, just to break up the mahogany."

"We don't want to screw ourselves in the foot."

"I think it's time to get our sleeves dirty."

"You can't see the forest if you're barking up the wrong tree."

"We need to get our ducks in the fire."

"We don't want to go barking up a dead horse."

"We're going to come out of this smelling like geniuses!"

"The ball is squarely on our shoulders."

"It's like those who can't, don't have to!"

"Your work is late, but that's neither hide nor there!"

"Sometimes you have to turn a blind ear to these things."

"The best way to learn is from the school of Fort Knox."

"Don't do anything in public that you wouldn't do in private."

"... Does anyone have a concern? Speak now, or hold your piece!" (e-mail)

"The Indians are nervous at Waterloo."

"Throw that monkey back over the fence."

"Let's not put our dandruff up in the air."

"Those new salesmen are still green behind the ears."

"She really rubs me up the wrong tree."

"Some of you think that only half of the Board of Directors do all the work and the rest do nothing, actually the reverse is true." (former CEO)

"Do you still live at your current address?" (Receptionist)

"Well, I'm just busier than a one-armed naked man."

"It depends whether you are drinking from the side of the glass that is half-full or half-empty."

"We triumphed over diversity." (Manager)

"It's an exercise in fertility."

"Hindsight is 50-50."

"Just use your own excretion."

"You are never going to fail unless you try."

"We're scraping the bottom of the iceberg."

"Today is like the day Rome was built in. We can't afford to have any fiddlers."

"The project is going down the toilet in flames."

"He might be barking at a red herring."

"You're treading on thin water."

I think he meant we should cross our T's and dot our I's but it came out this way: "Be sure we all cross our eyes."

"He's as deaf as a bat."

"We don't want to stick our necks out and get our asses chopped off."

"I gave him a real mouthful."

"I really took the bull by the hands."

"He doesn't know his hole from an ass in the ground."

"You should talk to her. She is a minefield of information."

"I can't remember but it's right on the tip of my head!"

"You can lead a pig to pearls..." and then he trailed off.

"Thanksgiving is early this year because the first Thursday fell on a Monday."

"The skeleton is there. You just have to sharpen it and put the decorations on the tree."

"We need an escape goat."

VP was speaking at a meeting and said, "Well, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him crap." Someone up front said, "That's drink...can't make him drink." To which the VP said, "That's stupid."

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed horse is king!"

A cow-orker once said, "Looks like he's thrown a wrench in the monkeyworks."

"A two-prawn approach is necessary."

"He won't last, he's just a flash in the pants."

One of the employees called in to say that she couldn't come to work because she "...had to have an autopsy."

My boss was telling a very involved story about something that happened to him. He leaned back nonchalantly and offered as a philosophical summary: "Sometimes fact is stranger than truth."

"It's a catch 20-20."

Our former boss suffered from the excessive use of mixed metaphors. An all-time howler was the day we asked him what his plans were to ensure success for a campaign and his reply was "Don't worry; I've got an ace up my hole."

At a management meeting, my CEO said, "Our company is like a living orgasm." Now that's what I call job satisfaction.

I overheard a manager congratulating an Induhvidual on having achieved a goal. The Induhvidual replied, "It was nothing. You planted the seed, and I ran with it."

In a meeting a cow-orker of mine referred to "the carrot at the end of the tunnel."

"We are going to be shooting from the seat of our pants on this one."

"Vision is in the eyes of the beholder."

"Part of the verbiage is a language thing."

"Eventually, I want it now."

"It's not that kind of zero."

"There are a lot of areas for efficiency reductions."

"In the last year, you've turned around 150%."

When a high-powered agent of the company walked into the lunch room, our secretary remarked to our group that she couldn't stand him because he was "so ego-testicle".

"I think you might have hit the nail on the button."

"...caught between a rock and a wet spot."

"It's like the naked leading the blind."

I was in a meeting the other day when one of my cow-orkers said, "We need to keep our noses to the ground, to hear what is coming!"

When discussing the most recent management initiative, my boss said that we better make sure our facts are straight, or "we won't have a leg to speak of."

Our CEO said, "You need to keep on burning the midnight oil... at both ends!"

My boss said we wanted to avoid a situation in our system design that would cause us to "bite our own foot."

My boss actually said, "If we can't lead them with a stick, we are going to have to beat them with a carrot."

My boss said, "It sounds like sour milk, and I don't like the smell of it."

During a big, formal presentation, my PHB explained how our Web site was built using "hyper-text magic language."

My co-worker just said her grandmother "smokes like a fish..."