Smartass explains why "Work Intelligent" poster is stupid

I’ve written thousands of things like what this person did, but don’t waste people’s time being so self important I think they should be subjected to my particular form of self righteous pedantry. Except for now.

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Your cute stack of balls has a berm to keep it from rolling all over the table and onto the floor. These poor workers live in Flatland, where berms are imaginary.

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‘Drive in a Friendly Manner’

Better driving advice: Be Predictable

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Since we are all in this thread jumping into what the article is criticizing… I’ll play.

Put casters on your cube and coerce another rube to abandon theirs and push yours. Serve with your choice of beverage, but I think a mojito would be appros

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So that’s what this is called. I had no idea. Thanks.

I suppose next you’re gonna ask people to stop texting while they’re in the driver’s seat of a moving vehicle.

/s

I just assume I’m completely surrounded by flaming idiots whenever I hit the road. Keeps me more alert to the shenanigans happening around me, and less likely to allow myself to get distracted.

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If the ultimate goal was to deliver the whole cube…

The “Goal” is to get the semi-sentient slobs in management to sign off on your half-assed motivational poster to promote their half-assed morale-improvement-without-actually-paying-people-more scheme while doing a bare minimum amount of work or intelligenting. In a way the poster is a perfect representation of the graphic artist’s job.

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Friendlily would therefore be the adverb derived from the adjective, but I've never seen it in use.
Linguist Arnold Zwicky at Language Log addresses "friendlily" and other *-lily* constructions:

Language Log:Self-Incorrection

why is he doing manual labor in a suit?

Also, if this is a representative sample, the employer seems to be racist and sexist, so fuck him and his cubes.

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It could be worse, they could all be running toward each other with the missing puzzle pieces.

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also the solution is pretty simple: get a larger block, carve it in to a sphere or cylinder, roll it to the destination then carve it in to a cube.

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How does he know the guy with the sphere didn’t lose much headway? What if he is the tail end of an earlier shipment of cubes. I don’t trust the credentials of this ‘smartass’ one bit!

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All of these workers are going to be outsourced by a single guy with a truck.

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I think that it was obviously chosen because it is concise and though ungrammatical or awkward most people will get it. While “Drive in a Friendly Manner” is probably much better it is too much text. Years ago there was a campaign here in Canada with the phrase “Drive Defensively”.

Then again, I recall signs that said “Corridor” which I think was less explanatory than “Pedestrian” or Pedestrian Corridor

The other US sign, (as a Canadian) I get a kick out of is the vaguely threatening “Litter and it will hurt”.

Yar, it be a cold day in hell before I moor in a land without a brass monkey.

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I think it was a smartass in the art department who delivered the imagery for this in the first place. The most direct translation of the graphic is “cut corners”

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Yeah, but metaphorically, he still has a point. The advice to “work smarter not harder” is dumb. What does it mean? Question and alter the methodologies and parameters of the job for expediency’s sake? By working “smart” one risks altering the parameters and output of one’s job such that one actually has screwed a number of things up.

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Well, if he was part of an earlier wave of block-movers, then Mr. Sphere would be really late in doing his job and thus a poor example for a “work intelligent” poster, wouldn’t he? In that case he’d be perfect for a “just do the fucking job and don’t get clever” poster.