You've Been in Corporate America Too Long When....

Date Received: Mon, 11 May 1998

  1. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.
  2. You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.
  3. You actually know what a paradigm is.
  4. You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.
  5. You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.
  6. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.
  7. You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities."
  8. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.
  9. You can explain to somebody the difference between "re-engineering", "down-sizing", "right-sizing", and "firing people's asses."
  10. You can spell "paradigm."
  11. You can use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing.
  12. You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review.
  13. You decide to re-org your family into a "team-based organization."
  14. You end every argument by saying "let's talk about this off-line".
  15. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed to "in debt."
  16. You give constructive feedback to your cat.
  17. You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.
  18. You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.
  19. You refer to dating as test marketing.
  20. You refer to your previous life as "my sunk costs."
  21. You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."
  22. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.
  23. You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.
  24. You think that it's actually efficient to write a ten page presentation with six other people you don't know.
  25. You understand your airline's fare structure.
  26. You write executive summaries on your love letters.
  27. Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.
  28. Your Valentine's Day cards have bullet points.

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