Humor

I was reminded the other day of the Dilbert cartoon above and it got me to thinking about what other stuff we might not hear around the office at a software company as product managers and product marketing folks.

1. I”m pretty sure I lost that deal because I was out sold.
2. If you are able to do this demo next week in Des Moines that would be great, since I really need to look busy for my boss and I’m only 30% of quota.
3. I’m sorry Mr. CTO, I’m pretty sure we can’t build everything and I hear there are already some good application servers out there anyhow.
4. I know it’s been in the backlog for a year, but we are probably never going to change the screens to chartreuse.
5. To be honest, I really thought it was a good idea to build the next generation platform, right up and until the migration process.
6. No, the client is nowhere near signing and I really have no idea if a discount will help, but you have to take a shot right?
7. Just to be clear, I’m pretty sure if I documented what I really thought we could make on this new product you wouldn’t have invested. Am I right?
8. No really, I’m not interested in writing specifications for the UI – that’s your job.
9. We probably won’t even get 1% of the market with this product.
10. Steve, this is Jeff, the product manager of product X, I’m just checking in to see if there are some upcoming demos you need done.
11. Cool, only 40 unread emails since I left yesterday. Today is starting off great!
12. No, I much prefer we launch 2 months later than planned
13. Since we’re agile now we should be able to get to that in 9 months.
14. I might have made a bad decision by deciding to launch with this minimalist feature set.
15. Good news! It does appear that there is nothing interesting in this release for buyers, so no collateral re-fresh for us!
16. Yeah! I get to do another custom presentation for a “big prospect”. Behind the scenes: Insert new prospect logo, search and replace customer name and create 1 slide based on my 2 hour overview from sales on this “unique” buyer.
17. I’m pretty sure the product manager just made up those revenue targets and market sizing numbers.
18. Shhhh, I just made up that stuff about seamless, enterprise class and scalable for the press release.
19. So how exactly should I positively message the fact we accidentally introduced a production down defect in the new release to the whole customer base?
20. No really, I look forward to sending those 4 emails to our customers this week, I’m sure they will understand how important our new release is for them by the end of the week.
21. Absolutely I’ll sit in on a qualifying call with your prospect, just in case they have some questions about our vision on the products.
22. Yup, I guess we did design that wrong.
23. It’s theoretically possible that our customers don’t think a migration is a good idea.
24. The leads y’all are bringing in are awesome!
25. I know you really needed that deliverable for your launch, but I just decided to ignore it – sorry.
26. I know you created some new slides, but I really just prefer using these ones from 5 years ago.  Oh, the company name changed?
27. There’s no way that can be done in 2 weeks, even in Ruby on Rails.
28. I can get all that data and have the report for you this afternoon – does that work?
29. No rush on the presentation, we can do it next week.
30. I understand there are other salespeople which need stuff, let me know when you can get to it.
31. We just had our budget approved with no edits and the CFO gave us an extra 10% for FY2011.
32. Just tell me what to do, I like working here and I don’t even care if it’s a bad idea and tanks the business.
33. At this early stage in the game how about we focus on cash and not revenue?
34. You really think all the products are about the same? Hmmm, that might explain something.
35. I’m not even sure I can close this deal in Q1 2012.
36. Yes, I’m proposing we adopt a new code base because it’s the new cool thing.  Did I mention we could do things quicker with “X”?
37. A 2 hour pre-call review is a great idea and I really think we should invite those additional 8 people who aren’t going to be on Webex with the prospect for their input to the call.

What other things would you like to hear around the office?