42 quotes
When it's done with being graceful and poetic, language is meant to communicate, after all.
But what can I say? That’s how business works. Nobody gives a crap about ethics. That’s why people like me will always be successful.
Company (2006)
There was no place for irony in marketing: it made people want to look for deeper meaning. There was no place in marketing for that, either.
Jennifer Government (2003)
John said, "You know what makes a successful executive?"
Jennifer Government (2003)
I feel comfortably qualified to talk about anything, but that's a personal problem and I'm dealing with it.
Apparently we’re now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don’t think anything of it.
It was amazing, he thought, how everyone bitched about corporations but no one was willing to risk pissing them off. Hack was disappointed at the level of motivation among this society’s counterculture.
Jennifer Government (2003)
"By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government."
Jennifer Government (2003)
I’m very interested in what sort of car she’s driving because I think it will reveal some insight into her personality. After all, I don’t have a car at all, and that reveals plenty about me.
Syrup (1999)
Corporations! It's like there are these gigantic monsters living among us, and we don't mind that they're monsters because when we look at them they smile and hand us cheeseburgers. That's nuts.
The whole morning feels very strange until I realize that for the first time in a long while, 6 and I don’t have anything to do. We have the whole weekend to kill: no deadlines, no last-minute struggles, no panic. It almost feels illegal.
Syrup (1999)
He is looking for something called The Omega Management System, which is the latest management fad in a tradition stretching back through Six Sigma and Total Quality Management to the practice of bleeding sick patients and investing in tulips.
Company (2006)
It was turning into a sly, anti–free market statement, and irony irritated him. There was no place for irony in marketing: it made people want to look for deeper meaning. There was no place in marketing for that, either.
Jennifer Government (2003)
The departments don’t report the problem because a good manager knows the only reason to call Senior Management, ever, is to deliver good news. People who ring Senior Management with problems do not have much of a future at Zephyr Holdings. Senior Management is not there to hold departmental hands. It is there to dispense stock options.
Company (2006)
Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of PowerPoint slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies.
Company (2006)
The only thing more amazing than the catalog of brutal methods the company uses to demean its workers is that it thinks it’s helping. Not that the employees are going to say this. Positive feedback is taken very seriously, often ending up in annual reports, but negative feedback leads to HR investigations into employee attitude problems.
Company (2006)
Hack was asleep when the phone rang. It was amazing how much more sleep he got now that he was unemployed. He was starting to feel bad for all the people who had to drag themselves into their drone factories by nine. They didn’t know what they are missing.
Jennifer Government (2003)
“We’ll refer the incident to the Government, and they will—”
“The Government? The enemy kicks you in the balls and you want to fill out a complaint form? You think the Government’s even on our side?”
Jennifer Government (2003)
Like every other department in Zephyr, Training Sales has an open floor plan, which means everyone works in a sprawling cubicle farm except the manager, who has an office with a glass internal wall, across which blinds are permanently drawn. Open-plan seating, it has been explained in company-wide memos, increases teamwork, and boosts productivity. Except in managers, that is, whose productivity tends to be boosted by—and the memos don’t say this, but the conclusion is inescapable—corner offices with excellent views.
Company (2006)
How she became manager remains a mystery. But there are only two possibilities. One is that Senior Management mistook her tirades for drive and a commitment to excellence. The other is that they knew Sydney was a paranoid psychopath, and that’s exactly the kind of person they want in management.
Company (2006)