Problem-solving flow chart

It's a little swear-y, but I like it.

Flowchart: Is it f*cked up? What to do, if so.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Anonymous

@ anon #4: I recall a version of this on the wall at John Booker & Company, a small instrument maker in Austin TX, cerca mid-1980s.
Anonymous

The giant echo chamber of the internet strikes again. This is a slightly more profane version a flowchart that has been around since the early 90s:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/94q2/probsolveflow.html

Can anyone find an earlier reference?
rarebeasts

Looks like how to cover arse in the work place. It could be used for all sorts of problem solving, I love it.
CastanhasDoPara

Rules to live by in a great many of cases.
Melted Crayons

I believe this was published in CoEvolution Quarterly once upon a time.
- bwcbwc
  
  Maybe even The Whole Earth Catalog…
Sminthian

I’d love to know the provenance, as I first saw this when I entered the workforce in the 80′s and it apparently had been floating around long before then.
110rdr33f4

At last, the next generation discovers it…
Anonymous

This was making the rounds of fax machines back in the 70′s, and probably earlier.
Donald Petersen

This goes back a long way. Didn’t an earlier version say, “Didst fuck with it? Yea? Thou dumb shit!”
Anonymous

Not to nitpick, but FYI:

http://boingboing.net/2007/08/20/flowchart_is_it_fcke.html
Anonymous

We have the clean version in our lunchroom, and it has probably been there since 1990.
Anonymous

My grandfather emigrated to the US in the 1950s, to help design modern jet airliners. He had a long and successful career.

I first saw this hanging in his home office, about 30 years ago. The more things change…
Anonymous

This is my favorite flow chart:
http://gotmedieval.blogspot.com/2007/08/medieval-safe-sex-flowchart.html
Anonymous

Here is a Safe for Work (SFW) version I made a few years ago when I first saw this.

http://i.imgur.com/xFbgj.png
scruss

This is a broken version of the old standard. I mean, if you didn’t f*ck with it, why would you catch hell for it?

My dad had one of these in the 70s (UK, computer bureau operator). It was also making the rounds (in Danish!) in the wind turbine industry in the early 1990s.
- Chrs
  
  Hah, doesn’t really matter if it’s your fault, sometimes you’ll catch hell for it anyway. Definitely not broken, unless you’re talking about the system it’s describing.
W00dy

Last time I saw this was a few months ago working onsite at a nuclear power plant. Always makes me chuckle.
lrivers

Here’s one from 2003: http://thunderchild.net/humor/image/did%20you%20fuck%20with%20it%20flowchart.jpg
Boondocker

I sure hope I’m in time to inform you all that this is old.

Like, I had a t-shirt with this on it in like, the nineties. Maybe even the late eighties.

OH-WALL-DUH!
sapere_aude

As a political science professor, I’d have to say that this is actually a pretty good model of how the American political system works.
Anonymous

Yes, i agree, it lacks a degree of ethical ownership. Though still funny
- mdh
  
  Yes, i agree, it lacks a degree of ethical ownership.
  
  he said, anonymously.
Anonymous

This has been around since the mid 80s at least. My father had a copy of this in that exact same odd font. This is an example of the sort of humor that used to circulate by fax.
- mdh
  
  odd font? um… yeah.
- grimc
  
  I think the ‘odd font’ is something we used to call “handwriting”
Anonymous

yup, I work at an engineering firm & this flowchart is most certainly posted on the wall.