Laura Carmichael Quotes

The hierarchy plays out in the writers room, and you, as a staff writer, need to know your place.

CEOs are called by their first names by young whippersnappers. That makes everybody uncomfortable. We need order and structure back in the workplace.

You know rule one for the vice president is make sure you never upstage the president, right? It's rule one.

I've told stories about people coming to my office and giving me their coats and requesting that I hang them up and get coffee - which I dutifully do. And then I come in and sit at the head of the table. It's awkward.

I think most people can identify with the hierarchy of the workplace.

A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee.

A deck of cards is built like the purest of hierarchies, with every card a master to those below it, a lackey to those above it.

I've met them down in the Cost and Accounting Department, clean-shaven and in white collars. They can't see a damn thing ridiculous about themselves... only about you.

Nobody in show business can possibly get away with making fun of their boss.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates do not talk with their boss the same way they talk with colleagues.

The first time I had a secretary, I was sheepish about being demanding or even asking questions.

They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places.

I should have never allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was.

Dear, never forget one little point. It's my business. You just work here.

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent.

If you're the head of a business, there's a protocol that people have to follow.

People always say it is carefree leaving officialdom, but actually they do want to keep the position.

Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed, Some are, and must be greater than the rest -

The reason the President’s office is oval is so he can’t corner an intern.

I will not take orders from Bob Haldeman and the West Wing. Unless I can take orders from you only, I am going to resign.

As routine business must always be dispatched, there is always a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world..

Knowing when and where to sit is something every young executive should learn. A junior person who comes barging into a room and takes any seat he wants catches the disapproving eye of senior management.

Positions do not really matter.