|
True
Tales of the Induhviduals
From The
Dilbert Newsletter :
"So,
is this going to be a musical opera?"
"Can
you tell me when my past due amount is due?"
"I think
they must put something in food that makes you have to go to the bathroom".
"If
the sun is a star, why can't you see it at night?"
"I thought
gold was made of diamonds."
"She'd
chase a monkey around the zoo if she thought that would help her find
her head."
"Do
BOTH ends of the cable have to be plugged in?"
"I've
got some irons in the fire that may lay some eggs in the next few weeks."
"I feel
like I'm beating my head against a dead horse."
"That's
like trying to put an apple in an orange hole."
"Walt
Disney would turn over in his grave if he were alive today."
Boss pep
talk: "Last year we were like lambs. This year we are going to be
sheep!"
A supplier
called, saying that the barcode scanner could not read the hyphen character.
Our engineer told her that she had to enable full ASCII on the scanner.
She replied, "There's an ass key on the scanner?"
[Editor's note: You can't type a colon without an Ass Key.]
A new member
of the staff thought she was doing very well during her probationary period
because the reports on her work came back from the Quality Assurance Department
marked NOTFAIL. It wasn't until her three-month performance review that
she learned that NOTFAIL is short for "notification of failure."
A manager
who received a new computer asked, "Don't these new computers come
with CDROM drives?" I said yes. He insisted that his computer did
not have a CDROM drive, but "There is a little drawer that opens
at the BOTTOM of my computer, but it won't hold a CD." He had the
computer upside down. I would have thought that the fact that everyone
else got a "DELL" computer and his said "77ED" would
have clued him in.
I was training
a new assistant to do our daily backup. She came to a point where she
was stuck. She had the mouse in her hand and asked me what to do next.
I told her to left-click anywhere in the white area. She asked, "Click
what?" I said, "The mouse." Her response was, "Where's
the mouse at?" Needless to say, I found a new assistant.
I once read
an article about a person who was against daylight savings time. She said
that the extra hour of sunlight would kill the grass. I mentioned this
story to my sister, laughing while I did so, and my sister replied that
there WAS extra sunlight during daylight savings. I explained that congress
couldn't legislate extra sunlight. To this day my college-educated sister
believes that daylight savings time gives us extra sunlight.
One of our
managers, in trying to explain how versatile he is, described himself
as "multi-flaccid."
This morning
while I was in our office kitchen, a co-worker walked up to me and asked
when my birthday was. I told her November. She looked puzzled and asked
if it was this coming November.
Some colleagues
and I were out to lunch when peers from a local competitor entered the
restaurant with a young engineer who was obviously being interviewed.
(We eavesdropped.) When asked why he went to a local college rather than
a nearby nationally ranked engineering school, the new guy said, "It's
too competitive. I can't take that kind of pressure." We hope they
hired him.
My ex's mom
took the written test to become a school bus driver. She was explaining
that the whole process was very difficult. She kept talking about how
hard the key-nah-low-gee test was. When I realized she was talking about
a "knowledge" test I had to leave the room to avoid hurting
her feelings by "laughing like a banshee."
One of my
two bosses took the company credit card on a business trip. Meanwhile
we needed the credit card number to buy a server. My other boss said,
"We used to have a sheet of paper around the office that had all
our company credit card numbers with their expiration dates and security
codes. I wonder what happened to that. Maybe we should make another one."
I was working
at an office supply store several years ago when I received a phone call.
The caller told me that someone had broken into his office and stolen
his fax machine. I sympathized. Then he asked me "How do I keep the
people who stole my fax machine from receiving my faxes?"
A science
teacher was telling her ninth grade students about how Mars and Venus
are sometimes visible in the night sky. One of the students asked if you
ever see earth in the sky as well.
I worked
for a computer repair company. We sold a monitor to a customer, who called
us a few hours later, very upset. He complained that the monitor we had
sold him was defective. After about ten minutes on the phone with him,
I determined that he had the screen part of the monitor face down on the
desk. He was staring at the base and wondering why it wasn't working.
He hung up rather sheepishly after this was explained to him.
I was at
a new grocery and asked where the flour tortillas were. The young woman
suggested checking the floral department.
After getting
lost, I stopped and asked the clerk of a convenience store for directions.
My confidence in him took quite a blow when he asked, "Are you coming
from State Route 37?" With as much patience as I could muster, I
said, "No. I'm coming from right here."
I work in
a large department store in London. I was taking the lift (that's an elevator
in American) and a lady got in with me. When the doors closed, she started
hammering the button for the ground floor with a look of grave seriousness.
Someone asked her why she kept doing it. "It keeps the lift from
stopping at other floors," she said, "unless someone has pressed
the button to call it."
I was traveling
on business in a small town. At about 9:00 pm, my colleague and I started
calling around for a place to eat that would still be open. The first
few restaurants that we called said they closed by 9:00, but we finally
found one that said they were open until 10:00. We rushed right over,
arriving at 9:15. The restaurant server gave us a seat, but no menus.
When we asked for menus she said, " Oh, the restaurant is open until
10:00, but the kitchen closes at 9:00."
Cigarette
packets in the UK feature huge health warnings that take up about two-thirds
of the front of the packet. These bear messages such as "Smoking
Kills" and "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you."
A colleague of mine was queuing in a store behind a woman who was buying
a packet of cigarettes. On seeing the packet that the storekeeper was
handing her, she said, "Oh no, don't give me the "Smoking Kills"
packet. Give me the "Smoking harms your fertility," 'cos I've
already got two kids."
I work in
an electric propulsion lab that contains several vacuum chambers for testing
propulsion devices in a space-like environment. During a routine safety
check, the safety officer was VERY concerned about the dangers of "vacuum
leaking out into the lab."
One day our
property office mistakenly faxed me a document on some equipment that
belonged to another department. I called to let them know that it had
been misdirected. The Induhvidual thanked me and requested that I fax
the document back so he could destroy it.
I asked a
customer, "Would you like a 20 ounce or 32 ounce drink?" He
responded, "Which one is bigger?"
In my high
school social studies class, we were having a discussion about Sigmund
Freud, the famous psychologist. After our teacher finished telling us
about Freud and his life, a girl asked which one of them got attacked
by the tiger. She thought we were discussing Siegfried & Roy.
I have a
part-time job as a tech support. I was explaining to a caller that she
should right-click on the image, and select COPY. When she asked me if
I was referring to MY right, or HER right, I hung up.
My birthday
falls on September 13th, which means that once every so often I have a
Friday 13th birthday. While on the phone to my friend discussing my birthday
plans she asked if I was superstitious about the date. I replied that
no, I had had birthday's on Friday 13th before and wasn't worried about
it. To which she responded "I wonder if my birthday will ever be
on Friday 13th?" Not likely, since her birthday is May 2nd.
Management
started having meetings to plan what the new organization would look like
after the upcoming layoffs. Our pointy-haired boss was invited to the
first two meetings but suddenly the invitations stopped. A day before
the layoff announcements he said, "I'm sure that the layoffs won't
concern our division because they haven't asked me for any names yet.
In fact, they don't even invite me to the meetings anymore!" (Guess
who was on top of the list?)
My co-worker
went to get her driver's license renewed at the Florida Department of
Motor Vehicles. The line was long, as always, and she took out her cell
phone to make a call. The clerk called out to her and the other people
in line, "You cannot use your cell phone in here; it makes our computers
run very slow!"
I work for
a government contractor and was recently in a meeting with a bureaucrat
who was explaining a new IT system. Describing how useful it was, he claimed
that it would meet our needs "99.9 times out of a thousand."
I was at
a high school football game when an induhvidual nearby asked, "How
many quarters are there in the game?"
My principal
was interviewing a candidate for a job as guidance counselor and said,
"Your references are so glowing it looks like you can walk on water."
The candidate was a paraplegic in a wheelchair.
I worked
with a woman who had a nose job. She said, "I wonder if my baby will
have my new nose or my old nose?"
I overheard
two students emerging from an "Introduction to Social Work"
class. One said, "I can't stand this class. All the teacher ever
talks about is her family. I hate hearing other people's problems!"
My older
sister was ranting about something and I commented, "You're acting
pretty stupid, ya know?" Her defense? "I'm not acting!!!"
During a
discussion of requirements for a new system we are developing, my manager
stated that he wants "24 x 7 availability, 5 days a week!"
About a month
ago, I was unable to avoid listening to a coworker in the next cube. He
was on the phone talking to his wife about their son, and I heard, "He
hit you? No, don't take that at all. Smack him if he hits you again."
I wonder where his son learned how to resolve problems? Today I heard
him talking to his wife about their daughter being in a fistfight. The
mystery deepens.
In class,
the teacher told us to answer questions one and two. A quick-thinking
student needed more clarity and asked, "Is that one AND two, or one
THROUGH two?"
We recently
interviewed a job candidate who told us that the thing she liked least
about her previous jobs was that she was "always getting written
up." Her explanation for the write-ups included fighting with co-workers,
being late, and making mistakes. I hope this was just a practice interview
because she needs it!
In my high
school biology class we somehow got on the topic of birth and the teacher
mentioned that his father was the first premature baby in the state to
have used an incubator. One Induhvidual raised his hand and asked, "Did
he survive?"
While I was
working my boss came up to me and asked "How much ink will it take
for me to scan this into my computer?" I replied that I didn't know
and that he should scan it in and see.
|
