And now, from our Department of Right Livlihood, here is:

Subject: Consulting jokes
From: Kevin Krom < >

Top 10 Signs You Work in Consulting:

• 10. You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on ways to improve their process
• 9. You get all excited it's Saturday so you can wear casual clothes to work
• 8. Refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as deliverables.
• 7. Find you really need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living.
• 6. Normally eat out of vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town within the same week.
• 5. Wear gray to work instead of navy blue to make a bold fashion statement.
• 4. Know the people at the airport and hotel better than your next door neighbors.
• 3. Ask your friends to "think out of the box" when making Friday night plans.
• 2. You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix
• 1. Think a half-day means leaving at 5 o'clock

Warnings for Consultants

You know it is time to get out of consulting when...

1. You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.
2. You decide to re-org your family into a "team-based organization."
3. You refer to dating as test marketing.
4. You can spell "paradigm."
5. You actually know what a paradigm is.
6. You understand your airline's fare structure.
7. You write executive summaries on your love letters.
8. You think that it's actually efficient to write a ten page paper with six other people you don't know.
9. You believe every company is "a traditional functional organization, with promotion based on tenure, but one that needs to change as it is facing ever increasing competition..."
10. You believe that a company's problems are never caused by an "ineffective handling of an administrative situation."
11. You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities."
11. You know every single piece of clip art in PowerPoint.
12. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.
13. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed to "in debt."
14. You ask your bank manager if she has heard of "Modigliani-Miller," and then you ask her if she has a pizza so you can show her.
15. You can explain to somebody the difference between "re-engineering," "down-sizing," "right-sizing," and "firing peoples' arses."
16. You actually believe your explanation in number 15.
17. You start doing your kid's math equations in reverse Polish notation.
18. You enjoy using an HP-12C.
19. You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost."
20. Your three meals a day are a morning consumption function, a noontime consumption function, and an evening consumption function.
21. You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."
22. Your favorite stories begin "Bob Jones, VP of marketing, sat at his desk and stared out his window..."
23. You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.
24. You believe CAPM is just as important as the Theory of Relativity.
25. You believe CAPM.
26. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.
27. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.
28. You refer to divorce as "divestiture."
29. Your favorite artist is the one who does the dot drawings for the Wall Street Journal.
30. None of your favorite publications have cartoons
31. You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.
32. You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.
33. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.
34. You always call your mechanic before you start your car to see if it will blow up given the day's weather conditions...
35. ...and expect him to use a decision tree to work it out.
36. You've decided the only way to afford a house is to call your fellow alumni and offer to name a room after them, if they'll help with the down payment.
37. Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills
38. You use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing.
39. You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.
40. You give constructive feedback to your dog

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