A Man in a Hot Air Balloon
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hourago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The woman below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of you, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault!”
Interview
Human resource manager to an applicant:
“Before our company accepts you to work here, I need to know if you are often late and if you tend to tell lies and steal things?”
“No. But if the company needs this kind of people I can learn quickly.”
Note of caution
An efficiency expert concluded his lecture with a note of caution. “You need to be careful about trying these techniques at home. ”
“Why?” asked somebody from the audience.
“I watched my wife’s routine at breakfast for years,” the expert explained. “She made lots of trips between the refrigerator, stove, table and cabinets, often carrying a single item at a time.
One day I told her, ’Honey, why don’t you try carrying several things at once?’”
“Did it save time?” the guy in the audience asked.
“Actually, yes,” replied the expert. “It used to take her 30 minutes to make breakfast. Now I do it in ten.”
Mathematical Problem
This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint… it goes like this:
What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?
Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it’s the Bullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top.
You Might Be an Engineer if…
your favorite James Bond character is “Q”.
you see a good design and still have to change it.
you still own a slide rule and you know how to use it.
your family haven’t the foggiest idea what you do at work.
in college you thought Spring Break was metal fatigue failure.
you have modified your can-opener to be microprocessor driven.
you are better with a Karnaugh map than you are with a street map.
you think the real heroes of “Apollo 13” were the mission controllers.
you take a cruise so you can go on a personal tour of the engine room.
you think “cuddling” is simply an unproductive application of heat exchange.
you have owned a calculator with no equal key and know what RPN stands for.
you make four sets of drawings (with seven revisions) before making a bird bath.
you have trouble writing anything unless the paper has horizontal and vertical lines.
your ideal evening consists of fast-forwarding through the latest sci-fi movie looking for technical inaccuracies.
you think the value of a book is directly proportionate to the amount of tables, charts and graphs it contains.
