Friday, April 30, 2010

Level up your humour with Microsoft

Via the always-interesting Alice, it appears Microsoft have added 'Humour' (or rather 'humor') to their set of professional development competencies

Rather worryingly, I'm not sure I even qualify for a 'Basic' level of 'humor' ("Is conscientious about timing and setting for humor"? Erm, define 'conscientious'....) Certainly the 'Overdoing Humor' section is worryingly familiar:

Overdoing Humor
May disrupt group process with untimely or inappropriate humor.
Yes. We call those 'script meetings'

May use humor to deflect real issues and problems
But if we addressed real issues and problems, there would be deaths, or worse: raised voices.

May use humor to criticize others and veil an attack.
Well you can't go criticizing people openly, they might notice.

May use humor to deliver sarcasm or cynicism.
NO!

May be perceived as immature or lacking in appropriate seriousness.
Pissflaps.

His/her humor may be misinterpreted.
Actually this does happen.

So in conclusion: er, 'pissflaps' again.

5 comments:

nanga parbat said...

Seems to me that Microsoft is staging a thinly veiled attack on Britishness itself!

*mans barricades* *sarcastically*

James Henry said...

*sips Molotov cocktail*

Mmm, firey.

Neil said...

So Microsoft's plans of world domination take one more step towards realisation. But worry not, when the zombies attack it'll all be over. Then that British reserve of not talking to anyone and not being friendly will pay off. Meanwhile, the Americans are offering lifts to the undead....

Tim F said...

I’d be more impressed if Microsoft began assessing people on their humours, and fired people because they had excessive black bile, or insufficent phlegm.

In fact, I’d be even more impressed if they burned a few developers for witchcraft.

Fat Roland said...

Crikes, all of this sums up my humour.

Incidentally, I have "screenwriting" all figured out, thanks to this helpful tutorial from Adam Buxton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9KTtgHVtA