Job Related Humor

A professor who had travelled out to teach a class in a remote community was stuck in the community by a bad snow storm. He sent an e-mail to his Dean advising him that he was stranded for a few days and requested instructions.

The Dean's reply came back shortly: "Begin vacation as of yesterday."

The dean of a large faculty noticed a new faculty member one day and told him to come into his office.

"What is your name?" was the first thing the dean asked the new guy.

"John," the new faculty replied.

The dean scowled, "Look... I don't know what kind of a mamby-pamby faculty you taught at before, but I don't call anyone by their first name. It breeds familiarity and that leads to a breakdown in authority. I refer to my faculty by their last name only... Smith, Jones, Baker... That's all. I am to be referred to only as Dr. Robertson. Now that we got that straight, what is your last name?"

The new faculty member sighed, "Darling. My name is John Darling."

"Okay John, the next thing I want to tell you is . . . "

Winter is the time when it is too cold to do the jobs it was too hot to do in the summer.

Employee's Ten Comandments

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.

Laws of Work

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done.
Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
He who hesitates is probably right.
You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
The last person that was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
Work is accomplished by those employees who are still striving to reach their level of incompetence.

When I take a long time, I am slow.
When my dean takes a long time, he is thorough.

When I don't do it, I am lazy.
When my dean doesn't do it, he is too busy.

When I do something without being told, I am trying to be smart.
When my dean does the same, that is initiative.

When I please my dean, I am sucking up.
When my dean pleases the vice-president, he is co-operating.

When I do good, my dean never remembers.
When I do wrong, he never forgets.

The Ten If's You Need to Know to Get Along at Work

If it rings, put it on hold.
If it clunks, call the repairman.
If it whistles, ignore it.
If it's a friend, stop work and chat.
If it's the Boss, look busy.
If it talks, take notes.
If it's handwritten, type it.
if it's typed, copy it.
If it's copied, file it.
If it's Friday, FORGET IT!!!

Metric Conversion Chart

10¹² Microphones = 1 Megaphone
10⁶ bicycles = 2 megacycles
500 millinaries = 1 seminary
2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds
10 cards = 1 decacards
1/2 lavatory = 1 demijohn
10^-6 fish = 1 microfiche
453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
10¹² pins = 1 terrapin
10²¹ picolos = 1 gigolo
10 rations = 1 decoration
100 rations = 1 C-ration
10 millipedes = 1 centipede
3 1/3 tridents = 1 decadent
5 holocausts = 1 Pentacost
10 monologs = 5 dialogues
5 dialogues = 1 decalogue
2 monograms = 1 diagram
8 nickles = 2 paradigms
2 snake eyes = 1 paradise
2 wharves = 1 paradox

1 millihelen = the amount of beauty required to launch 1 ship.
1 microsmile = that for which Al Jolson would walk one mile.
1 boost = 10^-18 boy (1 attoboy).
1 vanilli = 2000 guys who can't sing.
1 picobu = 1 I.C.U.
1 arnaz = 10 Cuban bandleaders.
1 mockingbird = 0.0005 novel, where 1 novel = 2 kilomockingbird.

And of course you remember Milli, Micro, Femto, and Atto, the Marx Sisters...

You Might Be A Teacher If...

You believe the staff room should have a valium salt lick.
You find humor in other people's stupidity.
You want to slap the next person who says, "Must be nice to have all your holidays and summers free."
You can tell it's a full moon without ever looking outside.
You believe "shallow gene pool" should have its own box on the report card.
You believe that unspeakable evil will befall you if anyone says, "Boy, the kids are sure mellow today."
Out in public you feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behavior.
Marking all A's on the report card would make your life SOOOO much simpler.
You're not talking about a food group when you mention "vegetables."
You believe in aerial spraying of Prozac.
You really encourage an obnoxious parent to check into charter schools or home schooling.
You've ever had your profession slammed by someone who would never, ever DREAM of doing your job.
You can't have children of your own, because there is NO name you could give a child that wouldn't bring on high blood pressure the moment you heard it.
You think people should be required to get a government permit before being allowed to reproduce.
You wonder how some parents ever MANAGED to reproduce.

YESTERDAY

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a deadline
hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.

Now all my data's gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

Never fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Every cow is sacred to it's mother.

When you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic going in both directions.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

You can't tell which way the train went by looking at the track.

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Every time you make ends meet, they move the ends.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger. -- Mark Twain

"Time's fun when you're having flies." -- Kermit the Frog

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready.

To succeed in administration, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

Eagles may soar, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.

Half the people you know are below average.

It has been determined that research causes cancer in rats.

If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you....

If Noah had been truly wise, he would have swatted those two flies.

The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift is taxes.

There's little worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

Variables won't; constants aren't.

To have true justice we must have equal harassment under the law.

The sqeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. --M. Twain

Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.

Turnover is good for the University, as it proves that we are doing a good job in training people.

What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.

The more crap you put up with, the more crap you're going to get.

New Travel Policy

Due to budget constraints, all University travel is subject to the following changes in policy, effective immediately:

LODGING-
Employees are to utilize all friends and relatives who live in the area you are visiting; if none are available, consider the shelters for the homeless which are available in all major cities. If weather permits, bridges and overpasses provide very good protection from the elements and you have the opportunity to meet new friends. Solar blankets are provided in the new travel packages issued to all traveling employees.

MEALS-
Salad bars are the most effective as one plate will serve four persons if no one is watching. Many grocery stores offer free samples, and with creative disguises, you may be able to obtain a full meal. Knowledge of indigenous roots, berries and other food sources are encouraged. Remember to place unknown berries under your lip for five minutes to determine if toxic. If you are attending meetings at convention centers or hotels, then visiting other meetings at meal times is certainly encouraged. A selection of name badges is available in the new travel package so that you will be able to get by any security.

TRAVEL-
Bus schedules are available in the Corporate Travel offices. Hitchhiking is a viable consideration and you will find your safety vest and sign board in your travel package. Airline tickets will only be issued in extreme circumstances, and then to the most economical destination.

ENTERTAINMENT-
The handbook "How Not to Pick Up the Cheque", is included in your package. Memorize this information......never pick up a cheque regardless of the embarrassment to yourself or others.

STRICT ADHERENCE TO THIS TRAVEL POLICY IS IMPERATIVE

GENERATION X AND THEIR OFFICE LINGO

Blamestorming: sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible
Body Nazis: hard-core exercise and weight-lifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively
Chainsaw consultant: an outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the top brass with clean hands
Cube farm: an office filled with cubicles
Ego surfing: scanning the Net, databases, print media, and so on, looking for references to one's own name
Elvis year: the peak year of something's popularity -- Barney the dinosaur's Elvis year was 1993.
404: someone who is clueless, from the Web error message "404 Not Found", meaning the requested document couldn't be located. -- Don't bother asking him, he's 404.
Mouse potato: the on-line generation's answer to the couch potato
SITCOM: stands for Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage
Stress puppy: a person who thrives on being stressed-out and whiny
Tourists: those who take training classes just to take a vacation from their jobs -- "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were tourists."
Xerox subsidy: euphemism for swiping free photocopies from a workplace
Starter Marriage: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
Swiped Out: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
Treeware: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
Assmosis: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
Generica: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is. "We were so lost in generica, I actually forgot what city we were in."
Midair Passenger Exchange: Grim air-traffic-controller-speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by "aluminum rain."
PEBCAK: Tech support shorthand for "Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard."
Percussive Maintenance: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

LABORATORY LAWS

Rhodes Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do the work.
Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
Pudders Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudders Law is not true).
Harvard Law: Under the most carefully controlled coditions of pressure, temperature, humidity and other variables, the system will perform as it damn well pleases.
Correspondence Corollary: An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory.
Sattingler's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.

Murphys Four Laws

There is no such thing as a straight line.
An easily understood, workable falshood is more useful than a complex, incomprehensible truth.
If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.
You can make it foolproof, but you cant make it damn foolproof.

The Dean hired a new Assistant Professor. At the conclusion of the interview the Dean said, "Please don't tell anyone what we're paying you."

"Don't worry Sir." the faculty member replied, "I'm as ashamed of my salary as you are."

The Evolution of a Math Problem
1950:
A lumberjack sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?
1960 (traditional math):
A lumberjack sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price, or in other words $80. What is his profit?
1970 (new math):
A lumberjack exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100, and each element is worth $1. Make 100 dots representing the elements of set M. The set C is a subset of set M, of cardinality 80. What is the cardinality of the set P of profits, if P is the difference set M\C?
1980 (equal opportunity math):
A lumberjack sells a truckload of wood for $100. His or her cost of production is $80, and his or her profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
1990 (outcome based education):
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, a lumberperson makes $20. What do you think of his way of making a living? In your group, discuss how the forest birds and squirrels feel, and write an essay about it.
1995 (entrepreneurial math):
By laying off 402 of its lumberjacks, a company improves its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per share does the CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80? Assume capital gains are no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.
1998 (motivational math):
A logging company exports its wood-finishing jobs to its Indonesian subsidiary and lays off the corresponding half of its Canadian workers (the higher-paid half). It clear-cuts 95% of the forest, leaving the rest for the spotted owl, and lays off all its remaining Canadian workers. It tells the workers that the spotted owl is responsible for the absence of fellable trees and lobbies Parliament for exemption from the Endangered Species Act. Parliament instead exempts the company from all federal regulation. What is the return on investment of the lobbying?