Riding a Dead Horse

From a U.S. Government Worker

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, our government entities seem to think other factors must be taken into consideration and other strategies often have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buy a stronger whip.

2. Change riders.

3. Threaten the horse with termination.

4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.

5. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Appoint an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.

8. Create a training session to increase the rider’s load share.

9. Reclassify the dead horse as “living impaired”.

10. Change the form so that it reads “This horse is not dead.”

11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.

14. Provide additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.

15. Do a time-management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.

16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.

20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.