Scott Adams' Dilbert blog has a funny list of readers' comments on work/office-place nightmare stories. (What a great way for him to get research/inspiration). This one doesn't really fit that pattern, but I thought I'd steal it for general amusement. It's attributed to here and elsewhere as well, so probably the kind of thing that gets forwarded round in emails.
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. But in modern business (and education and government) heavy investment or other considerations may encourage other strategies:
* Buying a stronger whip.
* Changing riders.
* Threatening the horse with termination.
* Appointing a committee to study the horse.
* Visiting other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
* Lowering the standards to include dead horses.
* Reclassifying the dead horse as "living-impaired."
* Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
* Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
* Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.
* Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
* Declaring that the dead horse requires less overhead and therefore contributes more to the bottom line.
* Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
* Promoting the dead horse to management
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