It is funnier when it happens to someone else

There is an e-mail that makes the rounds with lots of pithy sayings, one of which is,

"Some people are like Slinkys. Not really good for much, but still really fun to watch after you push them down the stairs"

or something along that line.

Well, I have been wracking my brain for a couple days trying to come up with something even remotely humorous to put up here. I have failed.

Which reminds me of the new product we launched about a year and a half ago. Market research was done, big plans were made, and a huge outlay of cash was performed to bring in a significant chunk of the product.

At the introductory meeting, the guy who was our GM at the time held a sales meeting to introduce it, and as he repeatedly stressed what an important product line it would be, his tag line was, "Failure is NOT an option."

To which some wag (and surprisingly, in a group where I was and was, at the time, happy...the odds are significantly less than 100% that the wag was me as there are two other guys with sharper wit and nastier tongues than I) replied, "It is not an option, but it IS a foregone conclusion."


Sadly, he was right. The line failed, and did so spectacularly. I sometimes wonder if that, indirectly, is not responsible for that GM leaving to pursue sales, his first and true love.

5 comments:

G. B. Miller said...

Nice.

Sounds like the software system we got for the state.

The people who bought it, were saying it would be the greatest thing in the world and it would help all of our various systems function better.

Baloney.

1) The people who were responsible for the fiasco, wound up leaving when our esteemed governor went to jail.

2) Our attorney general had to sue PeopleSoft and Oracle, to make sure that tech support would still be there for it, because, surprise, when Oracle was getting ready to buy PeopleSoft, they were saying that they would discontinue certain product lines (hint, hint).

3) This p.o.s. software is not designed for state govt. It's more desinged for small, medium and large corporations.

Pfft....

Riot Kitty said...

What a great quote! And G, is it wrong for me to be laughing?

G. B. Miller said...

R.K.: Not one bit. I normally don't rant like that on someone else's blog, but he was so spot on with his post, I just had to share my opinion of the garbarge that we are forced to use on a daily basis.

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Unknown said...

Cut out any reference to any research and that sounds like pretty much every government purchase ever made that was not related to the military. Not that military investments are always well researched, just that they sometimes are and it seems nothing else is (unless it actually had the potential to be beneficial, then it will be researched just enough to be shot down).

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