Side Business
I was reviewing employee evaluations at a Fortune 500 company, and one of them complimented an employee for improving as “he hadn’t yet eaten any glue this quarter.” I thought it was a mean joke about his intelligence, so I went to the manager and asked if there was a way she could cut the insults.
Manager: “It’s not an insult. I caught him eating glue twice last year. Wrote him up for it, too. He’s the reason the folks in documents have had to switch to different glue types.”
In these same comment evaluations, I found a comment card in our suggestions box that said, “Improve your seafood selection! Your trout made me sick!” We were a hardware store.
The boss mentioned it at the next store meeting, laughing and taking bets on which customer left it and which store she’d mistaken us for. Marko, one of the assistant managers, went white as a sheet.
Boss: “What’s the matter, Marko? Trout got your tongue?” Marko: “Umm, no, but that might have been me. I told a couple of customers about all the fish I caught on my vacation, and one of them asked if I’d caught any trout.” So he sold them some trout.