I was having coffee with Giles, one of my more philosophical colleagues, when he gazed distantly over the break-room candy machine and asked, "What are our company's values?" And I thought, "What are our company's values? I can't even figure out what is our company's dress code!"

Of course, that doesn't mean my company doesn't have any values; it just means that they are unspoken. And just because they're unspoken doesn't mean that they're unimportant. I mean, it's also unspoken that you shouldn't tackle the CEO and steal his shoes, but you don't see the last guy who did that getting a big promotion. So while Giles continued his pensive gazing, I thought about my company's values, those things we all hold dear, the foundation of our company upon which are placed the flooring of our objectives, the studs of our tactics, the drywall of our metrics, and the roof joists of our, uh, roof -- all of which is then coated with the waterproofing of our insurance.

I concluded that I can identify four values that my company has at its core: cost-consciousness, tidiness, punctuality, and cost-consciousness.

Let's take them in order. Cost-consciousness is definitely one of my company's values. How do I know? Because we used to have a guy who did daily reports about what our costs were, and there'd be hell to pay if his reports showed any. Then we became so cost-conscious that we fired the guy who did the cost reports and farmed them out to someone in China, who does them at a tiny fraction of what we were paying the guy we fired. They are, naturally, indecipherable, but that's OK because being decipherable is not one of my company's values.

The next value, tidiness, is a big deal at my company. If your desk isn't absolutely clear of everything, you might as well tackle the CEO and steal his shoes. We have strict guidelines about the impermissibility of having "toilet items" on our desks, including facial tissues, hand lotion, and soap-on-a-rope. We also have days designated every quarter for "office cleanup." Little drink cups with a half-inch of alcohol in them and a cotton swab tell you, "You'd better clean your keyboard, mister." We are allowed on those days to wear the same clothes we wear to clean out our garages. We also are allowed to bring in our own alcohol and cotton swabs (see Value One, above). The staff is directed on these cleanup days to give special attention to our communal refrigerator and to remove from it any items more than six hours old. Some of these items are recycled and placed in that candy machine Giles was gazing over (see Value One again).

Punctuality is Value Three. We're more obsessed with the clock than the Naval Observatory. Come in at 8:01 when your official starting time is 8:00, and you get a cross look. Come in at 8:05 and you get a talking to. Come in at 8:10 and you get a written warning, even if you come in on a stretcher. No one can really figure out where this obsession with punctuality came from, but it is sacrosanct and ruthlessly applied. Many birthday parties have started without the presence of the birthday person, and many job applicants have been summarily disqualified because they were two minutes late for an interview, even when their excuse is that the CEO unexpectedly struggled during their theft of his shoes.

So, what are the market prospects for a punctual, tidy, and highly thrifty organization? And if these aren't exactly the keys to corporate success, do we have any hope of changing them? Children have their values imprinted by the age of five; do companies likewise have their values imprinted immutably? Could we gain innovation through a hostile takeover or lose compassion during a particularly bad quarter? These are questions I intend to ask Giles tomorrow at 9 a.m. in the break room -- whether he's there or not.

Dan Danbom writes humor for a number of publications. His latest book is "Humor Meets Your Workforce: Make Laughter One of Your Organization's Goals."