From The Desk Of Cave Johnson

It has come to my attention that the phrase “we can’t” was used in a meeting on the second floor on Tuesday, in my hearing, by a man who has since been promoted, because I want it understood that I do not punish the phrase. I correct it.

“We can’t” is not a statement about the world. It is a statement about the speaker’s afternoon. The correct form is “we have not yet”, and department heads will use it, and if it turns out that we genuinely cannot, they will be the first to know, because I will be standing in their office with the thing that could not be done, done.

The bread order is to be increased. I am aware the commissary does not need more bread. The order is to be increased anyway, by the amount on the attached, and the invoice is to be sent to Accounting under the head of bread, and Accounting is to pay it under the head of bread, and nobody is to ask me what the bread is for.

The bread is for a man in New Mexico. He is not baking with it.

On Thursday last Mr. Dubois of your department put out a fire on bench four with his coat, which is the seventh fire on bench four and the first that was put out by anybody before the extinguisher arrived. He is employee of the month. He is to be given a new coat, on the company, of whatever kind he likes, and he is to be told that if he ever again puts himself between a fire and a bench I will have him sent to Legal, which is the worst thing I can think of.

The old coat is to be kept. I want it in a case on the third floor. That is not a joke.

I am aware it is eleven at night. I am aware you have a bus. I want you to know that I have never once, in thirteen years, had a thought worth writing down before nine in the evening, and that every good thing this company has built was dictated to one of you after the whistle, and that I know your names, all of them, and that I know which of you has the bus and which has the car and that I have arranged for the one with the car to take the ones with the bus, and that the arrangement is paid for, and has been since 1954, and that none of you were told, because you would have argued.

Now. Take this down. There is a man in Applied Sciences who has been through an eleven-inch pair, and there is a photograph, and I cannot write to his mother, and I have been trying since May, and I would like to try again now, with one of you in the room, because I cannot do it alone and I have found that out.

[The remainder of this memorandum was not transcribed. The steno pool has recorded that the President dictated for a further forty minutes and that nothing was written down, at his request, and that the one with the car drove everybody home.]

The machine has asked for a name and has prepared a list. I have read the list. I am not going to print the list, and I am not going to use anything on it, and I want the list filed, and I want the machine told, on a card, in plain words, that it will get a name when it has earned one, and that it will know when that is, because I will come down and tell it myself.

The third item on the list was a woman’s name and the machine has never been given it.

Thank you. That is all. C.J.