The First Facility Management Blog

Typically, facility managers appreciate the classic Murphy’s Laws (which go back as far as 1841, according to Wikipedia, but were formalized in 1877 at a meeting of an engineering society). The most common example, “anything that can possibly go wrong, does” made its first modern appearance in 1952, although the origins have been claimed by two sources (Jack Sacks, a mountaineering author, and Anne Roe, an author quoting a physicist).

This week, we have Peter SJF Bance to thank (again) for these lesser known laws from Murphy.

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

5. The 50-50-90 rule: Any time you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% likelihood you’ll get it wrong.

6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, at night, in the fog.

7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.

8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

10. When you go into court, you put yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

This Friday Funny comes from the site, AhaJokes.com.

A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the pants.

Don’t be irreplaceable, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested in, and say nothing about the other.

When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.

Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said there would be so many.

Keep your boss’s boss off your boss’s back. This is what I’m doing wrong.

Everything can be filed under “miscellaneous.”

Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.

To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing.

Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

The last person that quit or was fired will be the one held responsible for everything that goes wrong - until the next person quits or is fired.

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is always enough time to do it over.

The more pretentious a corporate name, the smaller the organization. (For instance, The Murphy Center for Codification of Human and Organizational Law, contrasted to IBM, GM, AT&T …).

If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

People are always available for work in the past tense.

If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.

When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.

No one gets sick on Wednesdays.

When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone Ranger handle this?”

The longer the title, the less important the job.

Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.

An “acceptable” level of employment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.

All vacations and holidays create problems, except for one’s own.

Success is just a matter of luck, just ask any failure.