I am a prosecuting attorney in a small Mississippi town and will admit to having a few extra pounds on me. Not long ago, I was questioning a witness in an armed robbery case. I asked, “Would you describe the person you saw?”
The witness replied, “He was kind of short and stout.”
“You mean short and stout like me?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” the witness said. “He wasn’t that fat.”
—WILLIAM E. GOODWIN
When I worked in the law library of the South Carolina attorney general’s office, one of my duties was to handle subscriptions to various law journals. I usually printed the material carefully because I had a habit of crossing double t’s so close to each other that they resembled an H.
On a particularly busy day, however, I filled out a subscription renewal form too quickly and mailed it in. A few weeks later, as I was sorting the mail, I came across the renewed publication, now addressed to “A Horney General’s Office.”
—RHONDA H. MCCRAY
I’m a police officer and occasionally park my cruiser in residential areas to watch for speeders. One Sunday morning I was staked out in a driveway, when I saw a large dog trot up to my car. He stopped and sat just out of arm’s reach. No matter how much I tried to coax him to come for a pat on the head, he refused to budge.
After a while I decided to move to another location. I pulled out of the driveway, looked back and learned the reason for the dog’s stubbornness. He quickly picked up the newspaper I had been parked on and dutifully ran back to his master.
—JEFF WALL
“But boss, when you said to apply for a bailout, I thought you meant for the company.”
Two lawyers walked into the office one Monday morning talking about their weekends. “I got a dog for my kids this weekend,” said one.
The other attorney replied, “Good trade.”
—CHARLES M. NELMS
Our four-month-old son accompanied my wife and me to our attorney’s office to sign some papers because we couldn’t get a sitter. Unfortunately, it took longer to transact our business than we planned, and eventually the baby was screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Maybe we should close the door,” my wife suggested, “so this noise won’t bother your colleagues.”
“Don’t worry,” our lawyer said. “They’ll just think another client has received our bill.”
—NARAYAN KULKARNI
My uncle testified at the trial of an organized-crime boss and then begged to be put into the witness-protection program. Instead, the FBI got him a job as a salesclerk at Kmart. It’s been six months and no one’s been able to find him.
—JAY TRACHMAN
I was eager to perform well in my new job as a receptionist at a law firm. One day a lawyer asked me to type up a letter that would be sent to the creditors of a man who had recently passed away. I was mortified, therefore, when soon after turning in the letter, I heard howling laughter from my boss’s office. The beginning of the letter read, “To all known predators.”
—JOANNA B. PARSONS
I was in juvenile court, prosecuting a teen suspected of burglary, when the judge asked everyone to stand and state his or her name and role for the court reporter.
“Leah Rauch, deputy prosecutor,” I said.
“Linda Jones, probation officer.”
“Sam Clark, public defender.”
“John,” said the teen who was on trial. “I’m the one who stole the truck.”
—LEAH RAUCH
In my job as a legal secretary, I often review documents that list the allegations and responses from the defendant such as “admitted,” “denied” or “have no knowledge or information to answer.” One day my boss received a response from a defendant who apparently did not have the benefit of counsel. His written reply to the allegations? “Did not!”
—SHARON A. PETERSON
After making numerous calls to 911, a Lundar, Canada, man was warned that the next one would land him in jail. That prompted him to give his real reason for calling: “If you’re coming to get me,” he told the dispatcher, “can you bring me some smokes.
—WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
My son, a West Virginia state trooper, stopped a woman for going 15 miles over the speed limit. After he handed her a ticket, she asked him, “Don’t you give out warnings?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “They’re all up and down the road. They say, ‘Speed Limit 55.’”
—PATRICIA GREENLEE
“My car has been tipped over and rammed repeatedly.
You don’t know anything about this do you, Carl?”
I’m a deputy sheriff and was parked near a motel, running radar checks, when a man approached my vehicle and asked for help. He complained that the volume on the television in the empty motel room next to his was so loud that he and his wife couldn’t sleep. No one was in the motel office.
The man’s wife was outside when I reached their door. That’s when I got my idea. I asked her for their remote control, aimed it through the window of the empty room, and turned off the blaring TV.
—RAY ALLEN
I was working the graveyard shift as a rookie police officer one night when my partner and I made a routine check at a high school that had suffered a recent rash of vandalism. Right away I noticed a window was open, so we climbed in to investigate.
We tried to be quiet as we made our way across the room in the dark, but our feet were sticking to the floor and making a squishy noise with every step. Finally when we got to the doorway, I flicked on the light. Looking back, I could easily make out our footprints on the freshly painted concrete floor. The window was open for ventilation, not vandalism.
—JEFFREY A. MOORE
As a state trooper, I drive a motor home to various weigh stations. It serves as our office on wheels while we conduct truck inspections. When the motor home is in reverse, it makes a repetitive beeping noise. One quiet morning I backed the unit out of its carport and stopped alongside my regular patrol car to retrieve something. As I walked toward the car, I heard the familiar beeping sound. My heart stopped as I turned, expecting to see the $80,000 vehicle backing itself down the driveway.
To my relief, the motor home was not moving. But at the top of a nearby tree sat a mockingbird perfectly mimicking the beep.
—JON LINDLEY
I glanced out my office window and saw that police had surrounded the motel across the road. A SWAT team had been dispatched, and people in the restaurant next door were being evacuated.
We soon learned that two armed suspects were holed up in the motel. I phoned my husband at work and described the unfolding drama. When I finished, my husband asked, “Did you call for anything special or just to chat?”
—VIVIAN J. HARTER
During an anti-harassment seminar at work, I asked, “What’s the difference between harassment and good-natured teasing?”
A coworker shouted, “A million dollars.”
—MARK STEPHENSON
I picked up the phone one day in the law office where I worked, and the caller asked to speak with an attorney. I didn’t recognize the voice, so I asked his name. He gave it to me, saying our office had just served him with divorce papers.
I couldn’t place his name right away because this was a new case. Eager to talk, he blurted out, “I’m the despondent!”
—CAROLINE NIED
The mine operator called the nearby state prison and asked them to send over a safecracker to open his jammed safe. Soon, a convict and a prison guard showed up at the office. The inmate spun the dials, listened intently and calmly opened the safe door. “What do you figure I owe you?” asked the mine operator.
“Well,” said the prisoner, “the last time I opened a safe, I got $25,000.”
The sheriff’s office in Alamance County, North Carolina, tried everything to stop people from using fake IDs to get a driver’s license, but to no avail. Fed up, wrote the News & Record (Greensboro, North Carolina), one industrious sheriff’s deputy concocted an ingenious plan, never before tried. He marched into the DMV waiting room and asked that everyone “with false IDs please step forward.”
Six did.
—KATH YOUNG
I answered a 911 call at our emergency dispatch center from a woman who said her water broke.
“Stay calm,” I advised. “Now, how far apart are your contractions?”
“No contractions,” she said breathlessly. “But my basement is flooding fast.”
—PAT HINTZ
When I stopped by his office, our company’s security chief was laboring over a memo he was writing announcing a class about the proper use of cayenne pepper spray for personal self-defense.
“I need a good title,” he said. “Something catchy that will get people’s attention so they’ll want to come.”
I pondered for a moment and then said, “How about ‘Assault and Pepper’?”
—BOB MCFADDEN
My mother is on staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and one day a close friend of hers came in to apply for a driver’s license. While entering the information into a computer, my mom noticed the woman had given 150 pounds as her weight.
Knowing she weighed considerably more, my mom commented, “You’re putting down your weight as 150?”
“If a policeman pulls me over,” her friend said with a grin, “that’s the part of me he’ll see.”
—GINA BREMMER
When a Middletown, New Jersey, police officer retired, he cited low morale. But he didn’t leave quietly. While walking the beat on his last day, he wrote 14 tickets for expired inspection stickers…all to police patrol cars.
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
Early in my career as a judge, I conducted hearings for those involuntarily committed to our state psychiatric hospital. On my first day, I asked a man at the door of the hospital, “Can you tell me where the courtroom is?”
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m the judge.”
Pointing to the building, he whispered, “Don’t tell them that. They’ll never let you out.”
—CHRISTOPHER DIETZ
My wife was raised in Sweden, yet speaks English without an accent. She does, however, sometimes confuse her idioms.
One day a man entered the law office where she works as a secretary. Using a Swedish phrase, but not quite translating it right, she asked, “May I help you take your clothes off?”
Startled by her remark, the man stepped back. Realizing what she had said and trying to put him at ease, she added, “It’s okay, really. I’m Swedish.”
—ROBERT E. ALEXANDER
When I worked for the security department of a large retail store, my duties included responding to fire and burglar alarms. A side door of the building was wired with a security alarm, because it was not supposed to be used by customers. Nevertheless they found the convenience of the exit tempting. Even a sign with large red letters warning “Alarm will sound if opened,” failed to keep people from using it.
One day, after attending to a number of shrieking alarms, I placed a small handmade sign on the door that totally eliminated the problem: “Wet Paint.”
—L. J. HINES-JOHNSON
The woman in front of me at the motor vehicles office was taking the eye test, first with her glasses on, then off. “Here’s your license,” the examiner said when she was done. “But there’s a restriction. You need to wear glasses to drive your car.”
“Honey,” the woman declared, “I need them to find my car.”
—NICOLE HAAKE
“Fine print doesn’t work anymore— the reader can just change the font size.”
Executive behind desk to prospective employee: “It’s always cozy in here. We’re insulated by layers of bureaucracy.”
—COTHAM IN THE NEW YORKER
Chris was sent to prison, and the warden made arrangements for him to learn a trade. In no time, Chris became known as one of the best carpenters in the area, and often got passes to do woodworking jobs for people in town.
When the warden started remodeling his kitchen, he called Chris into his office and asked him to build and install the cabinets and countertops. Chris refused.
“Gosh, I’d really like to help you,” he said, “but counterfitting is what got me into prison in the first place.”
An investment banker decides she needs in-house counsel, so she interviews a young lawyer.
“Mr. Peterson,” she says. “Would you say you’re honest?”
“Honest?” replies Peterson. “Let me tell you something about honesty. My father lent me $85,000 for my education, and I paid back every penny the minute I tried my first case.”
“Impressive. And what sort of case was that?”
“Dad sued me for the money.”
—DEE HUDSON
While working as a corrections officer at a maximum–security prison, I was assigned to the guest area one day to monitor the inmates and their visitors.
I received a call from the reception desk, and was told there was a cab out front, probably waiting for one of the visitors.
Sticking my head into the room, I announced, “Did anyone call for a cab?”
About 40 inmates immediately raised their hands.
—JANET E. HUMPHREY
The fist knocking on the door belonged to a cop. Bracing for the worst, my husband, who was working on a job site, opened up.
“Is that yours?” asked the officer, pointing to a company van that was jutting out into the narrow street.
“Uhh, yes, it is,” said my husband.
“Would you mind moving it?” asked the officer. “We’ve set up a speed trap and the van’s causing everyone to slow down.”
—JUNE STILL
I am a deputy sheriff assigned to courthouse security. As part of my job, I explain court procedures to visitors. One day I was showing a group of ninth graders around. Court was in recess and only the clerk and a young man in custody wearing handcuffs were in the courtroom.
“This is where the judge sits,” I began, pointing to the bench. “The lawyers sit at these tables. The court clerk sits over there. The court recorder, or stenographer, sits over here. Near the judge is the witness stand and over there is where the jury sits.
“As you can see,” I finished, “there are a lot of people involved in making this system work.”
At that point, the prisoner raised his cuffed hands and said, “Yeah, but I’m the one who makes it all happen.”
—MICHAEL MCPHERSON
Our community still has teenage curfew laws. One night I was listening to my scanner when the police dispatcher said, “We have a report of a 14-year-old male out after curfew. The subject, wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt, is six-foot-four and weighs 265 pounds.” After a long pause, one of the patrols replied, “As far as I’m concerned, he can go anywhere he wants.”
—JAMES VAN HORN
Hired by a bank as a personal trainer, I was supposed to make fitness a part of the workday routine. During one session, I told my students to lean against the bank lobby’s walls and instructed them on how to stretch their hamstrings. A short time later I was shocked when several policemen stormed through the doors. A passerby had seen the people facing the wall and assumed I was robbing the bank.
—SYLVIA DOUGHART-WOOD
I was working as an interpreter at a hospital when I found myself in the middle of an odd conversation. The doctor warned his patient, “By drinking and smoking as much as you do, you’re killing yourself slowly.”
The patient just nodded. “That’s OK. I’m not in any hurry.”
—SALMA SAMMAKIA,
As I performed a simple medical procedure on my patient, I warned her, “After this, you can’t have sex for at least three days.”
“Did you hear that?” she asked her husband. “No sex for three days.”
“I heard,” he said. “But she was speaking to you.”
—KATHLEEN HOWELL
When my daughter was home during college break, she came in for an eye exam at the optometrist’s office that I manage. I gave her some paperwork to fill out, and had to laugh when I read what she had written under method of payment: “My mom.”
—SHIRLEY KUDRNA
A man walked into our medical practice complaining that he was in agony.
“Where exactly is the pain?” asked his doctor.
“Near my ovaries,” he moaned.
“You don’t have ovaries.”
The patient looked confused. “When were they removed?”
—KELLI EAST
My nursing colleague was preparing an intravenous line for a 15-year-old male patient. The bedside phone rang, and the boy’s mother reached over to pick it up.
After talking for a few minutes, the mother held the phone aside, turned to her son and said, “Your dad is asking if you’ve got any cute nurses.”
The boy gazed at the nurse, who had the needle poised above his arm, ready for insertion.
“Tell him,” he replied, “they’re absolutely gorgeous.”
—MATTHEW HUTCHINSON
My mother and I were at the hospital awaiting some test results when several firemen were wheeled into the emergency room on stretchers. One young man was placed in the cubicle next to us. A hospital employee began to ask him questions so she could fill out the necessary paper work. When he was asked his phone number, we had to laugh. His reply? “911.”
—VICTORIA VELASCO
My 60-year-old mother-in-law, completing two years of wearing orthodontic braces, was in the office having them adjusted. As she sat in one of the waiting-room chairs, the teenager next to her looked at my mother-in-law in astonishment.
“Wow,” he said. “How long have you been coming here?”
—DAVID REEVES
“Don’t you hate it when there are parts left over?”
As a doctor I receive calls at all hours of the day. One night a man phoned and said, “I’m sorry to bother you so late, Doc, but I think my wife has appendicitis.”
Still half asleep I reminded him that I had taken his wife’s inflamed appendix out a couple of years before. “Whoever heard of a second appendix?” I asked.
“You may not have heard of a second appendix, Doc, but surely you’ve heard of a second wife,” he replied.
—JAMES KARURI MUCHIRI
I’m an obstetrics nurse at a large city hospital, where our patients are from many different countries and cultures.
One day while waiting for a new mother to be transferred to our division, I checked the chart and assumed that, because of her last name, she was of European descent. So when she was finally wheeled in, I was surprised to see that she was Asian.
As I was performing the exam, we chatted and she told me she was Chinese and her husband’s ethnic heritage was Czech. After a short pause she quipped, “I guess that makes my children Chinese Czechers!”
—LISA M. EDGEHOUSE
While I sat in the reception area of my doctor’s office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist’s desk, the man sat there, alone and silent.
Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother’s lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man’s, he said, “I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller, too.”
—STEVE ANDERSON
I hate the idea of going under the knife. So I was very upset when the doctor told me I needed a tonsillectomy. Later, the nurse and I were filling out an admission form. I tried to respond to the questions, but I was so nervous I couldn’t speak.
The nurse put down the form, took my hands in hers, and said, “Don’t worry. This medical problem can easily be fixed, and it’s not a dangerous procedure.”
“You’re right. I’m being silly,” I said, feeling relieved. “Please continue.”
“Good. Now,” the nurse went on, “do you have a living will?”
—EDWARD LEE GRIFFIN
Overheard outside my medical office—one woman complaining to another: “My doctor says I have masculine degeneration and that I’ll just have to live with it.”
—NANCY K. KNIGHT
My dentist’s office was in the midst of renovation when I arrived for a checkup. As the hygienist led me to a room, I could hear the sound of hammering and sawing coming from next door. “It must really scare your patients to hear that when they’re in the dentist’s chair,” I remarked.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “You should see what happens when they hear the jackhammer.”
—CHUCK ROTHMAN
At the outpatient surgery center where I worked, the anesthesiologist often chatted with patients before their operations to help them relax. One day he thought he recognized a woman as a coworker at the VA hospital where he had trained. When the patient confirmed that his hunch was correct, he said, “So, tell me, is the food still as bad there as it used to be?”
“Well,” she replied, “I’m still cooking it.”
—SHEILA HOWARD
A man walks into a cardiologist’s office.
Man: “Excuse me. Can you help me? I think I’m a moth.”
Doctor: “You don’t need a cardiologist. You need a psychiatrist.”
Man: “Yes, I know.”
Doctor: “So why’d you come in here if you need a psychiatrist?”
Man: “Well, the light was on.”
—HEATHER BORSDOR
On the job as a dental receptionist, I answered the phone and noticed on the caller-ID screen that the incoming call was from an auto-repair shop.
The man on the line begged to see the dentist because of a painful tooth.
“Which side of your mouth hurts?” I asked the patient.
He sighed and answered, “The passenger side.”
—CHERYL PACE SATTERWHITE
I was working with a doctor as he explained to his patient and her concerned husband what would happen during and after her upcoming surgery. Then the doctor asked if there were any questions.
“I have one,” said the husband. “How long before she can resume housework?”
—JONATHAN JACOB
My father is a successful cardiologist, but his busy practice and long hours left my mother with a lot of spare time. So she decided to become a substitute teacher.
At the end of her first month on the job, she bought my father a new watch. “Honey, I just spent my whole month’s salary on a gift for you,” she said. “It’s now your turn to do the same.”
—RAHUL TONGIA
The husband of one of our obstetrics patients phoned the doctor to ask if it would be okay to make love to his wife while he was taking medication for an infected foot.
“Yes, that’s fine,” the doctor replied. “Just don’t use your foot.”
My husband, a doctor, received an emergency call from a patient: She had a fly in her ear. He suggested an old folk remedy. “Pour warm olive oil in your ear and lie down for a couple of minutes,” he said. “When you lift your head, the fly should emerge with the liquid.”
The patient thought that sounded like a good idea. But she had one question: “Which ear should I put the oil in?”
—BELINDA HIBBERT
A harried man runs into his physician’s office. “Doctor! Doctor! My wife’s in labor! But she keeps screaming, ‘Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, can’t!’”
“Oh, that’s okay,” says the doctor. “She’s just having contractions.”
—DONNA WINSTON
Just because one owns a business doesn’t mean it has to be all business. This sign in a dentist’s office proves that point: “Be True to Your Teeth, or They Will Be False to You.”
—JAMES WERTZ
The doctor is called late at night to a woman in labor. He goes into the room and closes the door. After a while he calls out. “Could I have some pliers, a screwdriver, and a hammer, please.”
Turning deadly pale, the husband cries out, “For God’s sake, what are you doing?”
“Take it easy, I’m only trying to open my bag.”
—BOGNÁR JÁRFÁS
The patient who came to my radiology office for abdominal X-rays was already heavily sedated. But I still had to ask her a lot of questions, the last one being, “Ma’am, where is your pain right now?”
Through her medicated fog, she answered, “He’s at work.”
—JEFF DOTY
In our pediatric office, I answered the phone to hear a frantic parent say she was at a Chinese restaurant, and her son had gotten a piece of paper lodged in his nostril.
They came over, and the doctor examined the boy. When the exam-room door opened, the doctor was holding the fortune from the child’s cookie. It read “You will prosper in medical research.”
—KERRI PACE JACKSON
Exasperated with obnoxious patients in the clinic where she’s the office manager, my aunt put up a sign that read: “If you are grouchy, irritable, or just plain mean, there will be a $10 surcharge for putting up with you.”
Clearly some people took the sign to heart. That same afternoon a patient came to her window and announced, “The doctor said he would like to see me every month for the next six months, so I’m going to pay all my $60 up front.”
—JUSTINE A. BACARISAS
While visiting my mother in the hospital, I stopped in the cafeteria for breakfast. I set a piece of bread on the moving toaster rack and waited for it to pass under the heated coils and return golden brown. Instead, it got stuck at the back of the toaster and I couldn’t reach it. The woman next in line quickly seized a pair of tongs, reached in and fished out the piece of toast. “You must be an emergency worker,” I joked.
“No,” she replied with a grin. “I’m an obstetrician.”
—BECKY LEIDNER
The doctor’s office was crowded as usual, but the doctor was moving at his usual snail’s pace. After waiting two hours, an old man slowly stood up and started walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?” the receptionist called out.
“Well,” he said, “I figured I’d go home and die a natural death.”
—SIMON BJERKE
Paying my bill at the doctor’s office, I noticed one of the clerks licking and sealing a large stack of envelopes. Two coworkers were trying to persuade her to use a damp sponge instead. One woman explained that she could get a paper cut. Another suggested that the glue might make her sick. Still, the clerk insisted on doing it her own way.
As I was leaving, I mentioned to the clerk that there was a tenth of a calorie in the glue of one envelope. Then I saw her frantically rummaging around for the sponge.
—DOROTHY MCDANIEL
One afternoon a very preoccupied looking young woman got on my bus. About 15 minutes into the ride, she blurted out, “Oh, my gosh, I think I’m on the wrong bus line.”
I dropped her at the next stop and gave her directions to the right bus. “I don’t know where my mind is today. I must have left it at work,” she apologized.
Just before she got off, I noticed she was wearing an ID card from an area hospital. “Are you a nurse?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m a brain surgeon.”
—RACHELLE ROCK
Even though it was warm outside, the heat was on full blast in my office at the hospital. So I asked our nursing unit secretary to get someone to fix it. This was a one-man job, so I could not figure out why two guys showed up—until I was handed the maintenance request form. It read: “Head nurse is hot.”
—CAROLYN HOUSE
While taking a patient’s medical history, I asked if anyone in her family had ever had cancer.
“Yes,” she said. “My grandmother.”
“Where did she have it?”
“In Kansas.”
—DIXIE LEGGETT
Our crew at an ambulance company works 24-hour shifts. The sleeping quarters consist of a large room with several single beds, so we get to know one another’s habits, like who snores or talks in their sleep.
While I was having my teeth examined by a dentist one day, he noticed that some of my teeth were chipped. “It looks like you clench your jaw at night,” he said.
“No way,” I blurted without thinking. “No one has ever said I grind my teeth, and I sleep with a lot of people!”
—KELLY WILSON
A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office.
“Doc, every time I see nickels, dimes, and quarters, I have a panic attack! What can my problem be?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” the doctor answers. “You’re just afraid of change.”
—WAYNE BENNETT
Time is a great healer. That’s why they make you wait so long in the doctor’s office.
—RON DENTINGER
Last Valentine’s Day, I arrived at the doctor’s office where I work as a receptionist to find a mystery man pacing up and down holding a package. As I got out of the car, he declared warmly, “I have something for you.” I excitedly ripped open the bundle. It was a urine sample.
—HEATHER BOYD
Every so often I’d challenge a father visiting his newborn in the nursery, where I was a nurse, to guess his baby’s weight. Few even came close, but one dad picked up his son, hefted him in his hands, and gave me the precise weight, right down to the ounces.
“That was amazing,” I told him.
“Not really,” he replied. “I do this all the time. I’m a butcher.”
—NOLA FARIA
It was a busy day in the doctor’s office where I worked, and I was on the phone trying to arrange a patient’s appointment. Needing her daytime phone number, I hurriedly asked, “May I have a number between eight and five, please?”
After a moment came the timid response, “Six?”
—DEBORAH SIMONS
We were helping customers when the store optometrist walked by and smiled at a coworker. Of course, we all had to stop what we were doing to tease her. But she quickly dismissed the notion of a budding romance. “Can you imagine making out with an optometrist?” she asked. “It would always be, ‘Better like this, or like this?’”
—JESS WEDLOCK
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when a patient’s file arrived at our clerk’s office in the hospital—nothing, that is, until I read the doctor’s orders. He had written, “Chest pain every shift, with assistance if necessary.”
—PARR YOUNG
When a patient was wheeled into our emergency room, I was the nurse on duty. “On a scale of zero to ten,” I asked her, “with zero representing no pain and ten representing excruciating pain, what would you say your pain level is now?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not good with math.”
—DON ANDREWS, RN
While I was on duty at a Los Angeles-area hospital as a registered nurse, a man arrived in an ambulance, accompanied by his wife and a neighbor. “I’m worried about my husband,” I overheard the wife say to her friend. “Since we just moved here, I know nothing about this hospital.”
“Don’t worry,” her neighbor replied. “The doctors and nurses here are excellent. I should know—this is where my husband died.”
—MARGARET A. FRICE
Jack was depressed when he got back from the doctor’s office. “What’s the matter?” his wife asked.
“The doctor says I have to take one of these white pills every day for the rest of my life.”
“And what’s so bad about that?”
“He only gave me seven.”
—ROTARY DOWN UNDER
My ten-year-old son Andrew and I were waiting in a dentist’s office, talking about treatments for his painful tooth. Entering the room, the dentist asked, “Well, Andrew, which one’s the troublemaker?” Without hesitation Andrew replied, “My brother.”
—BELINDA SMITH
One day after a heavy snowfall, this announcement appeared on the bulletin board in the nurse’s lounge of my local hospital: “Student nurses will please refrain from ever again using this institution’s sterile bedpans for makeshift snow sleds.”
—JILL MARIE BONNIER
Employed as a dental receptionist, I was on duty when an extremely nervous patient came for root-canal surgery. He was brought into the examining room and made comfortable in the reclining dental chair. The dentist then injected a numbing agent around the patient’s tooth, and left the room for a few minutes while the medication took hold.
When the dentist returned, the patient was standing next to a tray of dental equipment.
“What are you doing by the surgical instruments?” asked the surprised dentist.
Focused on his task, the patient replied, “I’m taking out the ones I don’t like.”
—DR. PAULA FONTAINE
One day while at the doctor’s office, the receptionist called me to the desk to update my personal file. Before I had a chance to tell her that all the information she had was still correct, she asked,
“Has your birth date changed?”
—MARGARET FREESE
Seen on a car parked outside a gynecologist’s office: PUUUSH.
—CAROLE GROMADZKI
After practicing law for several months, I was talking with my brother, John, a doctor. “My work is so exciting,” I said. “People come into my office, tell me their problems and pay me for my advice.”
As older brother will, John took the upper hand. “You know,” he said, “in my work, people come into my office, tell me their problems, take off all their clothes and then pay me for my advice.”
—DAVID PAUL REUWER
While working as a radiologic technologist in a hospital emergency room, I took X-rays of a trauma patient. I brought the films to our radiologist, who studied the multiple fractures of the femurs and pelvis.
“What happened to this patient?” he asked in astonishment.
“He fell out of a tree,” I reported.
The radiologist wanted to know what the patient was doing up a tree. “I’m not sure, but his paperwork states he works for Asplundh Tree Experts.”
Gazing intently at the X-rays, the radiologist blinked and said, “Cross out ‘Experts.’”
—GENIEVE MARKOVCI
It took me forever to wake up one of my nursing home patients. But after much poking, prodding, and wrangling, he finally sat up and fixed his twinkling blue eyes on my face. “
My, you’re pretty!” he said. “Have I asked you to marry me yet?”
“No, you haven’t,” I gushed.
“Good. Because I couldn’t put up with this every morning.”
—DIANE WITLOX
“What’s the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?” I asked my husband. He thought for a minute before responding, “An optimist is the guy who created the airplane. A pessimist is the guy who created the parachute.”
—SUZAN WIENER
On a late Sunday night flight from Sydney to Brisbane, most passengers looked tired, harassed, and desperate to get off the plane. So did the cabin crew. As we were taxiing to the terminal, the steward started his spiel about remaining in your seats until the plane came to a standstill. He ended with, “Thank you for flying with us and be careful when opening the overhead toilets, which may have moved during the flight.”
—GLENDA FORKNALL
After setting off the alarms at airport security, I was escorted behind a curtain. As two female officials “wanded” me, the senior officer gave instructions to the trainee on proper technique: first down the front of my body, then up the back of me, and—much to my embarrassment—up between my legs.
After she was done, her boss congratulated her. “Great job,” she said. “Now do it again. But this time, try turning on the wand.”
—VICTORIA RADFORD
A helicopter loses power over a remote Scottish island and makes an emergency landing. Luckily, there’s a cottage nearby, so the pilot knocks on the door. “Is there a mechanic in the area?” he asks the woman who answers.
She thinks for a minute. “No, but we do have a McArdle and a McKay.”
En route to Hawaii, I noticed one of my passengers in the coach section of the airplane dialing her cell phone. “Excuse me. That can’t be on during the flight,” I reminded her. “Besides, we’re over the ocean—you won’t get a signal out here.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m just calling my daughter. She’s sitting up in first class.”
—DAWN CALLAHAN
I wouldn’t want to fly Virgin. Who’d want to fly an airline that doesn’t go all the way?
—ADAM J. SMARGON
As an airline reservation agent, I took a call from a man who wanted to book a flight for two but wasn’t happy with the price of $59 per ticket. “I want the $49 fare I saw advertised,” he insisted, saying he would accept a flight at any time.
I managed to find two seats on a 6 a.m. flight. “I’ll take it,” he said, then worried that his wife might not like the early hour.
I warned there was a $25 fee per person if he changed the reservation. “Oh, that’s no problem,” he said dismissively. “What’s fifty bucks?”
—ANNA ZOGG
When I worked in airline reservations, we had an executive desk, which did bookings for corporate clients during the day. One evening the phone rang and rang. Finally our supervisor picked it up and said in a monotone, “We are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please call back then.”
A voice on the other end asked, “Is this a recording?”
Without thinking, my boss replied, “Yes, it is.”
—ANNETTE MURRAY
As a flight attendant for a commuter airline, I constantly struggle to keep people seated until the aircraft has come to a complete stop at the gate. So one day, after making the standard announcement, I added, “Those of you who would like to stay and assist me in cleaning up the cabin, please volunteer by standing up before the seat-belt sign is turned off.” No one moved—and my solution has worked ever since.
—MARIE WHITEIS
Working as a secretary at an international airport, my sister had an office adjacent to the room where security temporarily holds suspects.
One day, security officers were questioning a man when they were suddenly called away on another emergency. To the horror of my sister and her colleagues, the man was left alone in the unlocked room. After a few minutes, the door opened and he began to walk out. Summoning up her courage, one of the secretaries barked, “Get back in there, and don’t you come out until you’re told!”
The man scuttled back inside and slammed the door. When the security people returned, the women reported what had happened.
Without a word, an officer walked into the room and released one very frightened telephone repairman.
—RUSS PERMAN
Plane Ridiculous
With airlines adding fees to fees, The Week magazine asked its readers to predict the next surcharge they’ll levy for something previously free.
In the unlikely event of loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop down. To start the flow of oxygen, simply insert your credit card.
$100 On-Time Departure Fee; $25 Delay-Complaint Fee
View seating (formerly window seats), $10; Access seating (formerly aisle seats), $10
$20 to use roll-away stairs to enter or exit the aircraft in lieu of no-charge rope-ladder alternative
$9 fee for bumping your head on the overhead bin as you take your seat; $3 additional penalty for looking up at the bin after you bump into it
The flight attendant will always tell you the name of your pilot. Like anyone goes, “Oh, he’s good. I like his work.”
—DAVID SPADE
I’m a captain with a major airline, and I routinely monitor the flight attendants’ announcements while taxiing to the gate. Impatient passengers often stand up and attempt to dash forward before we arrive. Once, instead of the usual terse voice reminding people to remain in their seats, I heard the attendant declare, “In the history of our airline, no passenger has ever beaten the aircraft to the gate. So, ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated.”
—JOE CONFORTI
My father’s colleague was on a company plane when, immediately after takeoff, a wheel fell off. The pilot did not want to land with a full fuel tank, so he circled through some heavy turbulence. When he finally touched down, he managed to tilt the plane, balancing it on only two tires until it had almost stopped.
As the pilot came out of the cabin to see if everyone was all right, the passengers noticed his name tag. It read “Bond.”
—ILA COLTAS
During a business trip to Boeing’s Everett, Wash., factory, I noticed several 747 and 777 airliners being assembled.
Before the engines were installed, huge weights were hung from the wings to keep the planes balanced. The solid-steel weights were bright yellow and marked “14,000 lbs.”
But what I found particularly interesting was some stenciling I discovered on the side of each weight. Imprinted there was the warning: “Remove before flight.”
—KEVIN N. HAW
My wife, a flight attendant for a major airline, watched one day as a passenger overloaded with bags tried to stuff his belongings in the overhead bin of the plane. Finally, she informed him that he would have to check the oversized luggage.
“When I fly other airlines,” he said irritably, “I don’t have this problem.”
My wife smiled and replied, “When you fly other airlines, I don’t have this problem either.”
—JOE CONFORTI
I took a part-time job as an opinion-poll sampler, calling people for their views on various issues. On my very first call, I introduced myself, “Hello, this is a telephone poll.” The man replied, “Yeah, and this is a street light!”
—ANDY GOLAN
Working for a florist, I took a call from a woman who spoke to me over a very crackly cell phone. She wanted to send a wreath to a friend’s funeral, but I couldn’t make out what message she wanted to accompany the flowers. Finally, I just had to interrupt her. “It’s a bad line,” I said over the din. There was a slight pause before she said, “Well, can you think of something better to say?”
—IVOR EDWARDS
A customer who bought a book from me through amazon.com left a poor rating. The reason: “The book was dated.”
The title of the book was Victorian Fancy Stitchery.
—MOIRA ALLEN
Even though telemarketers are slightly less beloved than dentists and tax auditors, that’s the job my friend took during his summer vacation. Halfway through one of his sales pitches, he heard a clicking at the other end of the line. Thinking the man may have hung up, he asked, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, still here,” said the man.
“Sorry, I heard a click and I thought you’d been disconnected.”
“No,” the man said, “that would sound more like this.” He then proceeded to show me what it would sound like by slamming down the phone.
—TRAVIS JAMES
My wife, a real estate agent, wrote an ad for a house she was listing. The house had a second-floor suite that could be accessed using a lift chair that slid along the staircase. Quickly describing this feature, she inadvertently made it sound even more attractive: “Mother-in-law suite comes with an electric chair.”
—MICHAEL KIMMIT
Two salesmen, Joe and Mike, were stranded by a winter storm and took refuge in an old farmhouse occupied by an attractive single woman. In the middle of the night, Joe heard Mike sneak out of bed and into the woman’s room. Joe said nothing about it until nine months later when a registered letter arrived at his office. Clutching the letter, he walked into Mike’s office. “Do you remember the night we were stranded by that snowstorm and you sneaked out of your room to be with that woman?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mike replied.
“You told her you were me, didn’t you?” Joe demanded.
“Yes, I did,” Mike said nervously. “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” Joe replied, “she just died and left me a fortune!”
—ALICE L. SMITH
My daughter and her husband were with us on vacation in Las Vegas, staying in a posh new hotel. As we were lounging by the pool, my son-in-law, whose company builds homes in the Phoenix area, used his cell phone to try to reach his salesmen.
After several unsuccessful attempts, he called his office. “Tell me something,” we heard him say. “Am I the only one working today?”
—PAUL JENNINGS
Corporate America lives and dies on the back of its sales force. Based on the following stories, some companies are DOA:
“We had a salesman who visited monthly and told me stories of his drunken escapades. After six months, I told him I was a Mormon and didn’t care for them. He apologized and then joked, ‘So how many wives you got?’”
“A salesman spelled my name wrong in his presentation. It’s Smith.”
“The all-male ad-agency team told my female marketing team that they understood tampons better than us.”
—JIM NICHOLS
Trying to sell ads for my high school yearbook, I approached my father, who owned a house painting business with my two brothers. My father agreed to purchase an ad and said I should ask my brother Jack to write it.
“We’re too busy now!” Jack protested. “If we run an ad, we’ll just get more work.”
“Jack,” I replied, “Dad said you have to write the ad.”
The next morning, Jack handed me his copy. It read, “John J. Pitlyk & Sons, Painting Contractors. For easy work, call the sons. If it’s hard, call Pop.”
—JOAN PITLYK
The restaurant we had lunch in is one business that knows how to handle dissatisfied customers. On the wall was an open bear trap and this sign: “To Register Complaint, Push Button.”
—MARK VELEZ
Seen in a John Deere sales office: “The only machine we don’t stand behind is our manure spreader.”
—NORMAN HAUGLID
A sales representative stops at a small manufacturing plant in the Midwest. He presents a box of cigars to the manager as a gift. “No, thanks,” says the plant manager. “I tried smoking a cigar once and I didn’t like it.”
The sales rep shows his display case and then, hoping to clinch a sale, offers to take the manager out for martinis. “No, thanks,” the plant manager replies. “I tried alcohol once, but didn’t like it.”
Then the salesman glances out the office window and sees a golf course. “I suppose you play golf,” says the salesman. “I’d like to invite you to be a guest at my club.”
“No, thanks,” the manager says. “I played golf once, but I didn’t like it.” Just then a young man enters the office. “Let me introduce my son, Bill,” says the plant manager.
“Let me guess,” the salesman replies. “An only child?”
My father is a skilled CPA who is not great at self-promotion. So when an advertising salesman offered to put my father’s business placard in the shopping carts of a supermarket, my dad jumped at the chance. Fully a year went by before we got a call that could be traced to those placards.
“Richard Larson, CPA?” the caller asked.
“That’s right,” my father answered. “May I help you?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “One of your shopping carts is in my yard and I want you to come and get it.”
—MATTHEW LARSON
The company I work for boasts a high-tech check-in system that enables our staff to monitor who is, and isn’t, in the office. Recently I asked a secretary if a particular supervisor was in. She agreed to find out, and left the room. When she returned a few moments later, I asked her if she had been using the new system to see if he was clocked in.
“No,” she replied. “I was looking out the window to see if his car is here.”
—BILL WILLIAMS
Now that my mother’s office has a fax machine, I fax my correspondence to her instead of using the post office. Although I’ve told her many times that it’s a faster and less expensive way to communicate, she continued to mail me weekly letters.
On my last birthday, however, she showed that she now has a full grasp of technology. She faxed me a $100 bill with the note: “Happy Birthday. You’re right—it is cheaper to fax than mail. Love, Mom.”
—SUSAN REILLY
In the office where I work, there is a constant battle between our technical-support director and customer-service personnel over the room temperature, which is usually too low.
The frustrated director, trying to get us to understand his position, announced one afternoon, “We need to keep the temperature below seventy-five degrees or the computers will overheat.”
Thinking that this was just another excuse, one of my shivering colleagues retorted, “Yeah, right. So how did they keep the computers from overheating before there was air conditioning?”
—HEIDI DYSARD
“It’s not personal, Carlyle. I just downloaded a new phone app that will replace you.”
During a lecture on the influence of media on teens, a typo in the PowerPoint presentation revealed the professor’s true opinion. The title read: “Three Reasons Teens Are Vulnerable Toads.”
—MICHAEL DOBLER
After a lengthy course on improving computer skills, a teacher finally seemed to get the hang of it. In fact, he admitted in his self-evaluation, “Computers have simplified and shortened my life.”
—BART ALTENBERND
One night, a few coworkers at the computer data center where I work stayed late, and we all started to get hungry. We decided to order in food by phone, but our boss thought that, since we work with computers, it would be more appropriate to order by Internet. After we contacted the fast food chain’s Web site and spent a long time registering as new customers for the delivery service, a message appeared on the screen: “Thank you for your business. You will be able to order food in three days.”
—THANTHIP RIOTHAMMARAT
Before retiring from my 30-year marketing career at IBM, I attended a seminar where a young salesman presented the latest PC. Impressed with the presentation, I remarked, “When I joined the company, we intended to make the computer as easy to use as the telephone. It looks like we made it.”
“We have,” the speaker replied. “We’ve made the phone a lot more complicated.”
—LYNN A. SMITH
The new computer system at work allowed us to e-mail messages to one another. Soon after it was installed, my boss saw me at lunch and asked me for some reports, adding, “I left a message on your computer.”
I had to laugh when I got back to my desk. There I saw his message—taped to the computer screen.
—JEANNE WASHBURN
A technology fanatic, my boss is adamant about creating a paperless office. Away on a business trip, he had left instructions on my voice mail: “Fax the contract revisions to your PC, then forward the fax to my e-mail box. When the transmission is complete, send a message to my digital-display pager. Then I will call you from my cellular phone with further instructions.”
Just after I finished listening to his message, though, my boss called back. He had forgotten his modem and now wanted me to send the documents to him by overnight mail.
—RENEE EAREGOOD
Learning new computer skills can be a challenge. An office manager in my software training class, taking nothing for granted, jotted down every word.
During a recent session, I peeked over his shoulder and read what he’d written: “New Computer Training—password is first name…Mine is Bob.”
—TIMOTHY FOUBERT
“HTML code is automatically generated by Fireworks when you export, copy, or update HTML,” stated our highly technical computer manual. But in case technophobes should begin to panic, it went on to explain, “You do not need to understand it to use it.”
—KATE LINDON
During a break at the plant where I’m employed, I walked by a friend who works with computers. He was sitting at his desk with his feet propped up, staring straight ahead as if in a trance. When he didn’t stir as I passed, I asked, “Are you all right?”
He blinked, smiled and said, “I’m on screensaver.”
—ALBERT F. BECKER
The computer in my high school classroom recently started acting up. After watching me struggle with it, one of my students took over. “Your hard drive crashed,” he said.
I called the computer services office and explained, “My computer is down. The hard drive crashed.”
“We can’t just send people down on your say-so. How do you know that’s the problem?”
“A student told me,” I answered.
“We’ll send someone over right away.”
—ROLF EKLUND
I was looking over some computer hardware at an electronics store when I overheard a customer tell the salesclerk, “I’d like a mouse pad, please.”
“We have loads to choose from, sir,” answered the clerk.
“Great,” said the customer. “Will they all be compatible with my computer?”
—SNEHAL SHAH
“Pardon me,” said the young man. I looked up from behind my desk at the library. “How do I get on the computer?”
“Just tell us your name and wait,” I answered.
“Okay, it’s John,” he said, “125 pounds.”
—LORI RICHARDSON
At the radio station where I worked, the manager called me into his office to preview a new sound-effects package we were considering purchasing. He closed the door so we wouldn’t bother people in the outer office. After listening to a few routine sound effects, we started playing around with low moans, maniacal screams, hysterical laughter, pleading, and gunshots. When I finally opened the door and passed the manager’s secretary, she looked up and inquired, “Asking for a raise again?”
—NANCY ERVIN
My husband and I are both in an Internet business, but he’s the one who truly lives, eats, and breathes computers.
I finally realized how bad it had gotten when I was scratching his back one day.
“No, not there,” he directed. “Scroll down.”
—CHRISTINE AYMAN
In an attempt to complete its fiscal year figures on time, our company’s finance department one day posted this sign outside its offices: “Year-end in progress. Please be quiet.”
Our network specialist, whose office is right next door, put up this notice in response: “Shhh…quiet please. Information Technology works all year.”
—LINDA MCGRAW
As a new federal employee, I felt a combination of excitement and anxiety about meeting the strict standards of discretion and respect that our government imposes on its workers. Fearful of making a costly mistake, I decided to read up on procedures and standards on the federal Office of Personnel Management web page. I’m not sure if I was relieved or worried when I clicked on one page and found: “Ethics: Coming Soon!”
—JAMES RESTIVO
After being on the phone forever with a customer who had been having difficulties with a computer program, a support technician at my mother’s company turned in his report: “The problem resides between the keyboard and the chair.”
—NICOLE MILLIGAN
“I don’t understand it, sir, the computers have only been down for an hour.”
I had always considered myself a with-it communicator of the ’90s. But I had no clue what my friend was saying recently when he pointed out a “Double Beamer.”
“What do you mean by ‘Double Beamer’?” I asked.
With a grin he replied, “An IBM employee driving a BMW.”
—KAY L. CAMPBELL
My husband, Brian, is a computer systems administrator. He is dedicated to his job and works long hours, rarely taking time off for meals.
One afternoon, Brian was overwhelmed with solving a computer network problem, so I decided to deliver a meal for him to eat at his workstation.
When I was getting ready to leave, I said good-bye and reminded him to eat his burger and fries while they were still warm.
Staring at his monitor, he waved me away. “Don’t worry,” he said, obviously distracted, “I’ll delete them in a few minutes.”
—MICHELLE HILL
Manning the computer help desk for the local school district was my first job. And though I was just an intern, I took the job very seriously. But not every caller took me seriously.
“Can I talk to a real person?” a caller asked.
“I am real,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the caller said. “That was rude of me. What I meant to say was, could I talk to someone who actually knows something?”
—SHARRON JONES
As I was cleaning my computer keyboard with a can of air duster (compressed chemicals), I noticed a slew of warnings: “Do not breathe fumes!” “Use only in well-ventilated areas!” “Avoid contact with skin and eyes!” And in BIG, impossible-to-miss letters: “INTENTIONAL MISUSE BY DELIBERATELY INHALING CONTENTS CAN BE FATAL!”
Then, I turned over the can. There, I found a symbol with a tree in it. Surrounding it were the words “Environmentally Friendly.”
—SHARON BACON
My techie husband and I were walking in the high desert when he stopped to photograph one stunning vista after another. Overcome by the sheer beauty, he paid it his ultimate compliment: “Everywhere I look is a screen saver!”
LAURIE EYNON
My husband, Jeff, and I incurred several problems while assembling our new computer system, so we called the help desk. The man on the phone started to talk to Jeff in computer jargon, which confused us even more. “Sir,” my husband politely said, “please explain what I should do as if I were a four-year-old.”
“Okay,” the computer technician replied. “Son, could you please put your mommy on the phone?”
—LENA WORTH
Driving on the interstate, I saw a vehicle with the license: ALT F7. I checked my computer at home, and as I suspected it was a Word-Perfect command. The truck had to belong to a plumber. Who else would choose the command: “Flush Right”?
—RUTHANN NICHOLS
Over the years I have heard my share of strange questions and silly comments from people who call the computer software company where I work as a tech support telephone operator. But one day I realized how absurd things can sound on the other end of the line when I heard myself say to one caller, “Yes, sir, you must first upgrade your download software in order to download our upgrade software.”
—CARLOS MEJIA
On my way to deliver a computer to a customer, I saw a handwritten sign at the entrance of an alley. It read: “Blocked! Do not pass! Difficult to turn back.” I continued anyway, only to discover that the alley was indeed blocked by a fallen tree.
As predicted, it took a while to turn the truck around. When I finally got back to the entrance, I noticed a second sign. It read: “Told you so!”
—IRWAN WIJAYA
I couldn’t have been happier the day I figured out how to play my favorite CDs on my computer at the office while simultaneously doing my work. One day I was enjoying Beethoven when an administrative assistant delivered a stack of papers. Hearing classical music fill the air, she shook her head and said, “Don’t you hate it when they put you on hold?”
—BENNY J. WURZ
No doubt about it, the new temp hadn’t a clue about computers. Since part of her job was directing calls to our technical support department, I gave her simple instructions: “When people call with computer problems, always ask which operating system they’re using—Windows, Macintosh or UNIX.”
Later, she handed a technician this phone message. “Call immediately,” she’d written. “Customer has problem with eunuchs.
—SUSAN CROFT
Powering up his office computer one morning, my colleague saw a unique error message: “Keyboard undetected.”
Then he saw how he was supposed to clear the error: “Press any key to continue.”
—DAVID BAUER
A computer company had a seemingly impossible problem with a very expensive machine. Staff engineers tried everything they could think of, but they couldn’t fix it. Desperate, they contacted a retired engineer with a reputation for repairing all things technical. The engineer spent a day studying the huge machine. With a piece of chalk he marked the trouble spot with an X. The part was replaced, and the machine worked perfectly again. But when the company’s accountants received the engineer’s bill for $50,000, they demanded an itemized tally of his charges.
The engineer responded: One chalk mark, $1. Knowing where to put it, $49,999.
A coworker asked if I knew what to do about a computer problem that was preventing her from getting e-mail. After calling the help desk, I told my colleague that e-mail was being delayed to check for a computer virus.
“It’s a variant of the I Love You virus, only worse,” I said.
“What could be worse?” my single coworker asked wryly. “The Let’s Just Be Friends virus?”
—ARTHUR J. ORCHEL
With five kids at home and one more on the way, I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I was assigned the following password for my computer at work: “iud4u.”
—CAROLYN THOMAS
I work in a busy office where a computer going down causes quite an inconvenience. Recently one of our computers not only crashed, it made a noise that sounded like a heart monitor. “This computer has flat-lined,” a coworker called out with mock horror. “Does anyone here know how to do mouse-to-mouse?”
—MARY BOSS
The latest term being bandied about our IT office is PICNIC: “Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.”
—ARLIN JOHNSON
The chef of the upscale restaurant I manage collided with a waiter one day and spilled coffee all over our computer. The liquid poured into the processing unit, and resulted in some dramatic crackling and popping sounds.
After sopping up the mess, we gathered around the terminal as the computer was turned back on.
“Please let it work,” pleaded the guilt-ridden waiter.
A waitress replied, “Should be faster than ever. That was a double espresso.”
—BRIAN A. KOHLER
I was a computer-savvy student, so the high school librarian called me to her office complaining of a computer crash. While booting up the computer, I asked her what she had done immediately prior to the crash. “I just erased some files that were taking up memory space,” she replied matter-of-factly. “There was one big one that the Spanish teacher, Señorita Dobias, must have put on there. I think it was called DOS.”
—BRANDIE LITTLETON
At work, my dad noticed that the name of an employee was the same as that of an old friend. So he found the man’s e-mail address and sent him a message. When Dad received a reply, he was insulted. So he fired back another e-mail: “I have put on some weight, but I didn’t realize it was that noticeable!”
His friend’s hastily typed message, with an apparent typo, had read, “Hi, Ron. I didn’t know you worked here, but I did see a gut that looked like you in the cafeteria.”
—BRAD CARBIENER
The pastor of my church hates to plead for money. But when the coffers were running low, he had no choice. “There’s good news and there’s bad news,” he told the congregation “The good news is that we have more than enough money for all the current and future needs of the parish. The bad news is, it’s still in your pockets.”
—GILES V. SCHMITT
“What’s the difference between a Catholic priest and a minister?” our daughter Sarah asked.
My husband, a pastor, answered, “Well, one big difference is that a priest can’t marry. That’s because he’s expected to devote his life to God. A pastor also dedicates his life to God, but he can marry. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.”
Sarah’s next question: “Priests can’t eat cake?”
—JO-ANNE TWINEM
During our priest’s sermon, a large plant fell over right behind the pulpit, crashing to the ground. Acknowledging his reputation for long-windedness, he smiled sheepishly and said, “Well, that’s the first time I actually put a plant to sleep.”
—DAVID BERGER
A Catholic priest I once knew went to the hospital to visit patients. Stopping at the nurses’ station, he carefully looked over the patient roster and jotted down the room number of everyone who had “Cath” written boldly next to his name.
That, he told me, was a big mistake. When I asked why, he replied, “It was only after I had made the rounds that I learned they were all patients with catheters.”
—DENNIS SMYTH
“But wasn’t God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the ultimate multi-Tasker?”
As church treasurer, he had two computer files labeled “St. Mary’s Income” and “St. Mary’s Expenditure.” While copying them from a Macintosh to a PC, he had no idea the PC would automatically truncate the file names to ten characters, eliminate spaces and replace apostrophes with periods.
Now the church’s income is stored in “StMary.sin” and expenses in “StMary.sex.”
—CHRISTINE THIEN
One Sunday, while serving as a guest minister to a local church, I noticed in the program an order of worship with which I was unfamiliar. Since the service had already begun, I was unable to ask anybody about it. So when we reached that particular moment, I swallowed my pride and asked from the pulpit, “What do I do now?”
Someone in the congregation shouted back, “You say something and we respond.”
Embarrassed, I admitted, “For the first time in my life, I’m speechless.”
And the congregation responded, “Thanks be to God.”
—BEN POWELL
While I was preaching in a church in Mississippi, the pastor announced that their prison quartet would be singing the following evening. I wasn’t aware there was a prison in the vicinity and I looked forward to hearing them. The next evening, I was puzzled when four members of the church approached the stage. Then the pastor introduced them. “This is our prison quartet,” he said, “behind a few bars and always looking for the key.”
—RAYMOND MCALISTER
My appointment as pastor coincided with the church’s appeal for aid for victims of a hurricane.
Unfortunately, on my first Sunday in the parish, the center page of the church bulletin was accidentally omitted. So members of the congregation read from the bottom of the second page to the top of the last page: “Welcome to the Rev. Andrew Jensen and his family…the worst disaster to hit the area in this century. The full extent of the tragedy is not yet known.”
—ANDREW JENSEN
When our minister and his wife visited our neighbor, her four-year-old daughter answered the door. “Mom!” she yelled toward the living room. “God’s here, and he brought his girlfriend.”
—KRISTEN KIMBALL
When a nun collapsed in the sales representative’s office at our time-share resort, the rep ran to the front-desk manager.
“Two nuns walked into the sales office, and one of them fainted!” she yelled breathlessly.
Unfazed, the manager just looked at her.
“Well,” said the rep, “aren’t you going to do anything?”
He replied, “I’m waiting for the punch line.”
—DONNA CAPLAN
Having grown up just outside New York City, I barely knew a cow from an ear of corn. Until, that is, I married a small-town Ohio girl. While I was in seminary school, I had a temporary assignment at a church in a rural community. The day of my first sermon, I tried very hard to fit in. Maybe too hard. With my wife sitting in the first pew, I began my discourse: “I never saw a cow until I met my wife.”
—THE REV. LOUIS LISI, JR.
My friend opened a ministry, using a snippet from the Bible as the name. But he soon regretted his decision to order office supplies over the phone. When his stationery arrived, it bore the letterhead: “That Nun Should Perish.”
—TOM HARRISON
When I was 28, I was teaching English to high school freshmen in a school where occasionally the faculty and staff were allowed to dress down.
One of those days I donned a sweatshirt and slacks. A student came in and his eyes widened.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “You should wear clothes like that every day. You look twenty, maybe even thirty years younger!”
—MARY NICHOLS
At a cross-curricular workshop for teachers, several of us from the English department found ourselves assigned to a math presentation. In the middle of the lesson, I leaned over to a colleague and whispered, “Are you getting any of this?”
He shook his head. “Math and I broke up in the ’80s, and now it’s really awkward whenever we get together.”
—BECKY POPE
At a planning meeting at my college, I congratulated a colleague on producing some superb student-guidance notes explaining how to combat plagiarism.
“How long did it take you to write them?” I asked.
“Not long,” he said. “I copied them from another university’s website.”
—BOB WHEELER
While I was an office worker at the local high school, a student stopped by to turn in a lost purse. I gave it to the principal so he could look inside for some type of identification. Moments later his concerned voice could be heard over the intercom: “Liz Claiborne, please come to the office. We have found your purse.”
—KATY HYCHE
When my niece’s coworker, Eula, began a job as an elementary-school counselor, she was eager to help. One day during recess she noticed a girl standing by herself on one side of a playing field while the rest of the kids enjoyed a game of soccer at the other. Eula approached and asked if she was all right. The girl said she was.
A little while later, however, Eula noticed the girl was in the same spot, still by herself. Approaching again, Eula offered, “Would you like me to be your friend?”
The girl hesitated, then said, “Okay.” Feeling she was making progress, Eula then asked, “Why are you standing here all alone?”
“Because,” the little girl said with great exasperation, “I’m the goalie.”
—BOBBYE J. DAVIS
One of my students could not take my college seminar final exam because of a funeral. No problem, I told him. Make it up the following week. That week came, and again he couldn’t take the test due to another funeral.
“You’ll have to take the test early next week,” I insisted. “I can’t keep postponing it.”
“I’ll take the test next week if no one dies,” he told me.
By now I was suspicious. “How can you have so many people you know pass away in three weeks?”
“I don’t know any of these people,” he said. “I’m the only gravedigger in town.”
—SRINIVAS NIPPANI
Discovered: why our nation’s education system is in trouble. When a friend delivered 20 new math books to a teacher’s classroom, the teacher exclaimed, “Oh, shoot! I was hoping it was something I could use.”
—ANGELA TIMPSON
“You need to be careful when writing comments,” our principal told the faculty. He held a report card for a Susan Crabbe. A colleague had written, “Susan is beginning to come out of her shell.”
—MARGARET WHARF
A linguistics professor was lecturing his class. “In English,” he explained, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative.
“However,” the professor continued, “there is no language in which a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
—E. T. THOMPSON
When our students began raising donations for Child Abuse Prevention Week, the school administration did its part by setting up a collection box outside the principal’s office and displaying a banner by the front door of the lobby. It read “Please give $1 to help stop child abuse in the front office.”
—ANGELA LONG
After lunch at a restaurant with five other teachers, my friend Shirley realized they’d forgotten to ask for separate checks. To figure out how much each owed, the tab was passed around the table. The group laughed and chattered through the whole ordeal.
When they finally rose to leave, the man in the next booth grinned at Shirley. “You ladies sure are having a great time,” he remarked. “What business are you in?”
“All teachers,” she said proudly.
“Ah,” he replied. “I knew you weren’t accountants.”
—WILLMA WILLIS GORE
During the college speech course I taught, I spoke about a Chinese student who, after moving to the United States, decided she wanted an English name to honor her new home.
“She chose the name Patience,” I told the class, “because she wanted to be reminded to be patient. Every time someone called her name, the message was reinforced.”
I asked the students what names they would select for themselves. After considering the question, one young man raised his hand and said, “Rich.”
—JOAN WALDEN
“Ms. Henson, you’re going in for Ms. Simms.”
As a band instructor at an elementary school, I require my students to turn in practice sheets signed by their parents so I can be sure they are putting in enough time. I had to laugh, however, when one parent wrote on her child’s sheet, “Practiced 17 minutes, but it seemed like hours.”
—MEGAN E. TUTTLE
Our school had just installed a new air conditioning system, and a representative from the company wanted to make sure it was running smoothly. Poking his head into an empty classroom, he asked the teacher, “Any little problems here?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “All our little problems have gone home.”
—ROSALIND POPOV
My wife and I were watching the gorillas at the zoo when several of them charged at the enclosure fence, scattering the crowd, except for one elderly man. Later, my wife asked him how he had kept his composure.
“I used to drive a school bus,” he explained.
—MARVYN SAUNDERS
Our architectural school had been without a department chairperson for two years, and students were growing frustrated at the lengthy process of choosing a new candidate. Finally a group of students sent a message to the dean. He arrived at school one morning to find 50 seats stacked up in front of his office. A sign said “Pick a chair!”
—SANDRA HEISER
I’m a high school geometry teacher and I started one lesson on triangles by reading a theorem. “If an angle is an exterior angle of a triangle, then its measure is greater than the measure of either of its corresponding remote interior angles.”
I noticed that one student wasn’t taking notes and asked him why.
“Well,” he replied sincerely, “I’m waiting until you start speaking English.”
—PATRICIA STRICKLAND
After applying their lipstick in the school bathroom, a number of girls would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints. The principal decided that something had to be done. So she called all the girls to the bathroom and explained that the lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian. To demonstrate how difficult it was, she asked the maintenance man to clean one of the mirrors. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet and swabbed the glass.
Since then, there have been no lip prints.
—PHIL PROCTOR IN PLANET PROCTOR
I was working as a school psychologist in a major city when I was reassigned to a different school. I arrived at my new location early and started to get acquainted with the staff.
The secretary checked for the correct spelling of my name so she could place it on the directory posted near the school entrance.
Later in the day I happened to walk past the directory and saw that she had completed the job, though not in the format I would have expected. There, in front of my name, was the word psycho.
—RICHARD E. BUSEY, JR.
Rushing to work, I was driving too fast and as a result was pulled over by the highway patrol. The state trooper noticed that my shirt had the name of a local high school on it. “I teach math there,” I explained. The trooper smiled, and said, “Okay, here’s a problem. A teacher is speeding down the highway at 16 m.p.h. over the limit. At $12 for every mile, plus $40 court costs, plus the rise in her insurance, what’s her total cost?” I replied, “Taking that total, subtracting the low salary I receive, multiplying by the number of kids who hate math, then adding to that the fact that none of us would be anywhere without teachers, I’d say zero.” He handed me back my license. “Math was never my favorite subject,” he admitted. “Please slow down.”
—MEGAN STRICKLAND
I’m a teacher and high school basketball coach. During one season, things went from bad to worse when we lost to our local rivals by more than 30 points.
The next day in class, when one of my students asked about the game, I answered, “Let me put it this way. If this were the NBA, I would have been fired today.”
“That’s not true, Coach,” the student said. “If this were the NBA, you would have been fired a long time ago.”
—LLOYD ALDRICH
I had been teaching my seventh-graders about World War II, and a test question was, “What was the largest amphibious assault of all time?”
Expecting to see “the D-Day invasion” as the answer, I found instead on one paper, “Moses and the plague of frogs.”
—STEVEN CALLAHAN
