Office Hierarchy Quotes

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.

An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed, the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).

If you are only an underling, don't dress too fine.

It seems to limit you; when you're working in an office, you're a creature in a small cell under somebody's supervision and surveillance.

Generally, people who crib about corporate politics are, more often than not, those who've played the game but lost it.

I had never used the prefix 'Dr.' with my name, but when I started with NASA, I had to. Otherwise, I could not get past the secretaries.

All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.

Those who act as if they know more than their boss seldom do.

If an executive producer has written a certain line, and an actress says it, and it's not very funny, you don't dare go to them and say, 'I don't like this,' because it will make your life miserable.

People are responsible adults at home. Why do we suddenly transform them into adolescents with no freedom when they reach the workplace?

Here at work, obviously, I make the most money of anyone on the show, so I try to be the first one here and the last one to leave. I have the crummiest office. I try to balance things out, spread it around.

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.

Even at the United Nations, where legend has it that the building was designed so that there could be no corner offices, the expanse of glass in individual offices is said to be a dead giveaway as to rank. Five windows are excellent, one window not so great.

The larger office, the corner space, the extra window are the teddy bears and tricycles of adult office life

I don't like being told what to do and kissing you-know-what to get up the corporate ladder.

You can get a good handle on a company's culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, 'We value our employees' but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin.

The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.

I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor.