I live in a dichotomy of existence at times. 1. My personal life where I’m a father trying to teach two boys to question authority, steer clear of conformity and the status quo, and to play loud and hard and believe in themselves all while listening to me and obeying my fatherly advice. 2. My professional life where I’m employed by the largest manufactures of airworthy goods and services and subscribe to order, bureaucracy, and process control while wearing collared shirts and neck ties. Oh, to be conflicted. The point where profession meets punk is where I live. And it is a good to place to be.

And while I’m not of fan of control and processes, I recognize the need for enabling bureaucracies that create proactive work environments, innovative life changing products, and successful world class companies.

In my sweet embrace of the system and control, I’ve been very fortunate to be successful at my place of employment. But like any company of this size, there are bureaucracies which support the business in changing the world and there is the other "stuff" which just doesn’t make much sense at times. I’ve always personally struggled with the sheer volume of meetings I’ve been required to attend. In defense of the meeting, many we have are quite necessary as it takes a village and consensus to make a decision and take action on initiatives.


But we have a lot of meetings nonetheless. Some are effective while others, well, not so much. And from these meetings comes interesting dialogue. So I’m not writing this entry to disparage my employer. It’s taken care of me because of my hard work and afforded me a great life. Furthermore, I believe in the products we create. This entry is to share some of the humor we find as employees and servants to the enterprise. Without further adieu, I bring you the top 50 quotes heard at meetings during 2010:

1. It's important for us to be smarter than the parts we're trying to manage.
2. I learned about, like, communications and stuff.
3. No one is using it so there aren’t any complaints.
4. I don’t want to hire anyone who wants the job.
5. Reducing travel at our company feels like a no-smoking campaign at Phillip-Morris
6. Don’t take it personally unless it fits.
7. They aren’t old airplanes they are experienced.
8. No one ever wins a horse race yelling “Whoa.”
9. They send you out like sending sheep wandering in a mine-field.
10. For subjects like this I put my buddy by the light switch.
11. If my lips are moving I am thinking.
12. If anyone says they know the story they don’t.
13. We see the light at the end of the tunnel but sections of the tunnel keep getting added.
14. Engineers are like sharks when they smell schedule relief in the water.
15. You had me at level 5.
16. There is more than one way to peel a cat.
17. I definitely need a blueberry phone too.
18. I want my presence so small they'll call it nano-management.
19. Same monkey, different zoo.
20. I hope you appreciate all of the efforts we take to make your life more difficult.
21. See you next week if you're not lucky and I'm not careful.
22. He's never not there when I don't need him.
23. This is an insulated incident for wire design.
24. Every time you idiot proof something, someone builds a better idiot.
25. We may have shipped for no reason, but it was a good thing.
26. We don't have committed dates to slide the plan.
27. We will send Auburn body parts.
28. Consistency is important and it isn't always my strong suit.
29. I could ask for something different, but it would just be a contribution to the make a wish foundation.
30. Mostly within the bounds truth.
31. They were squirming like a bunch of shivers looking for a spine to crawl up.
32. I love coming here and watching those airplanes roll by. It’s very relaxing….like going to yoga.
33. The automated machine is really only automated when it works!
34. It should be a process not an adventure.
35. Blame the lawyers -- it helps and it is inherently believable.
36. I keep my sunshine on the inside.
37. We will try anything easy that doesn't work before we try anything hard that does work.
38. The kits are sent "overnight" - which actually means three days.
39. For some reason their data was not being calculated incorrectly.
40. It's like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
41. Too many life rings will drown you!
42. We need to get out of the mode of admiring the problem.
43. We're beating the same dead horse, but from a different angle.
44. Everett needs a defrag.
45. Apparently I'm remembering something that never happened.
46. We need two smart people working this... so far we have one.
47. We'll share the high level, so you can see some of the details.
48. We need to let the plan ferment, so it has some bite to it.
49. We have to burn it to make sure it is not flammable.
50. We are moving to a company server so we are training our team to work slower.

I can’t take credit for the list as it was compiled by a peers probably sharing the same penchant for the humor of dialogue and over-used meetings philosophy.