Disappearing creatively

Besides selective amnesia, the mind meld method and taichi, there's the lamest tactic of all - Excuses...

It's typically used by junior dark managers because the "flee mechanism" is still very instinctive. Throughout my working life, I've heard many; but the following are the more creative ones

1. The Father/Mother/Wife/Girlfriend/daughter/son emergency
   There's just so many permutations to go about this, and if you've noticed the rule of thumb; it has to be your most immediate relatives.
   Wife - pregnancy; failure to get pregnant; pregnant but with complications. There's nothing like the notion of an unborn child in distress.
   Father - major illness like cancer, renal failure (something thats protracted where ppl dun die that quickly while being depressing enough)
   Son/Daughter - High fever. Honestly, i think that's really lame, but it somehow works.
   Brother/Sister - loan shark problem. This is really good, cause you come off as a goody big brother/sister role model that your family depends on.
   
   
2. The most recent transmitted decease emergency.
   It used to be SARS, then the Bird flu and the most recent the Swine flu. The cool part about this is the quarantine procedures. You and I know that Human Resources are typically too lazy I mean busy to check whether the person really did either contract the decease or not. Heck, they probably wont even come near you with a 10 feet pole. By virtue of association you get yourself a 5-7 day full salary paid leave, having fun with your PS3 at home.
   
   
3. Emergency Meeting with the VP/President/CEO
   This works as well because no one ever checks where's the head honcho is, let alone bother to ask the secretary of his location. This may even be true, as you could always magically find the time to help the boss synch his blackberry with outlook... something that you've been putting off just for this situation
   
   
4. The family holiday to Australia just came up.
   And guess what, it somehow always come up the week after a major incident where the big presentation to the customer needs to happen. So the chief peon (your no.2 guy needs to do it on your behalf)
   
   There' a slight nuance to excuse 4; if it's the presentation to your boss; you want to do it yourself cause the presenter might blame it on you. But if its to the customer; the unspoken "code of not making your company look like a useless dick that it is infront of your customer" applies. So you're safe!
   

Decidophobia - The Fear of Making Decisions

Checkout the wikipedia entry here: Decidophobia

There's essentially no cure, but a common solution would be a "dilution" of authority via consensus or communal decision making. We tend to call it "The Management Committee"

Berkowitz vs Kowalski

There's just something about Jewish names and court cases. It makes it sound horrendously expensive like some KKR leverage buyout. The same should apply with how Dark Managers name their departments. Lobbing your foreskin doesn't cut it anymore, you gotta have the kippah and curly sideburns to earn the credibility.

Most Dark Managers make the mistake of naming the department as per it's intention. So here's some suggestions to lend a little false sense of grandeur:-

Objective:The lame ass grind of PC Support and answering phone calls from wankers.
Potential Names: Office Automation, End Computing Support
Better: Corporate Computing Services

Objective:The collection of reports that will eventually be fudged to make the ugly look good, and the good look beautiful.
Potential Names: Corporate Governance, Corporate Planning
Better: Corporate Strategic Intelligence

I mean, some rules of thumb apply;

1. If it works out to a 3 letter Acronym that sounds like a grander organization, CSI, FBI, NSA etc then the better it gets.
2. 2 Letter Acronyms are lame
3. 4 Letter ones better sound like a cool misspelled profanity e.g FCUK
4. When all else fails, don't ask an engineer or a geek. They tend to come up with horrendous puns and snicker away at their supposed ingenuity.
5. If you're adventurous enough to invent a nonsense word e.g. Accenture or Avanade; you better have a killer 30 second spiel or be already famous to begin with. (Well; being the Board of Director's nephew works as well)
   

How to handle Dumb and Dumber

A friend asked; what do I do with staffs that are just too dumb to be any good. To be honest, all the training in the world is not going to change him/her because "dumbness" is an attitude; not a skill deficiency.

It's like a sense of initiative or curiosity, it is not a condition or an affliction, but a state of mind. So a Dark Manager will take one of the following options

a) Assign him to the most mind numbing task possible, as typically folks at the shallow end of the IQ spectrum have a high threshold for boredom.
b) Give him a glorious commendation to be transferred to another department.

Either way, out of sight, out of mind.

Seriously though, dark managers love dumb resources because it's the few people in the world that can withstand the dark manager's ingenuity (note: sarcasm).

When you work with stupid people

The hinges to my notebook starts giving way and I mistakenly approached the peons instead of working my way down from the department head. So this is what I got

"According to our record, your notebook will be reaching its leasing maturity period in less than 3 months from now. So, if the current one still can be stretched for this period of time, we will be very grateful for your understanding. Should the notebook fails completely, then we will assist to find you a replacement unit, though it may be a challenge as we do not keep any spares"

Try replacing that email with a doctor patient scenario:-

“I am sorry, but your pacemaker is up for renewal only in 3 months time, we know its faulty now; but hopefully it will last that long… but if it kaputs on you we will try to find a replacement pacemaker… and I hope you understand that it’s really hard to find a replacement when it breakdown too, cause we don’t keep spares… ”

Which brings to mind Carol:-

Scriptonomatophobia

I saw this in one of those answers.com websites asking whether there's a medical name for the fear of signing one's name.

"Scriptophobia" is fear of writing in public. "Nomatophobia" is fear of names.

So perhaps Scriptonomatophobia is the fear of signing one's name on a document that can be traced to you when the shit hits the fan.

What they should have mentioned is that Dark Managers carry this sickness like a recessive gene. The more dark managers they are in the company, the more Scriptonomatophobic managers take time off or work out an excuse to tai chi authorizations to a subordinate or to another department.

Leadership & Management

I got this from an old boss which I highly respect.

There's essentially 2 types of people that I've worked with:-

• 1) Leaders with a clear vision who are catalysts to positive change
• 2) Highly paid rubber stampers with an ego that match their salary -> The Dark Manager!