A businessman was interviewing job applications for the position of manager of a large division. He quickly devised a test for choosing the most suitable candidate. He simply asked each applicant this question, "What is two plus two?" The first interviewee was a journalist. His answer was, "Twenty-two". The second was a social worker. She said, "I don't know the answer but I'm very glad that we had the opportunity to discuss it." The third applicant was an engineer. He pulled out a slide rule and came up with an answer "somewhere between 3.999 and 4.001." Next came an attorney. ... read more

The clerk walks into the boss's office and says, "The auditors have just left, sir." "Have they finished checking the books?", asks the boss. "Very thoroughly," is the reply. "Well, what did they say", says the boss. "They want 15% to keep quiet."

By the time a Marine pulled into a little town, every hotel room was taken. "You've got to have a room somewhere," he pleaded. "Or just a bed, I don't care where." "Well, I do have a double room with one occupant, a Navy guy," admitted the manager, "and he might be glad to split the cost. But to tell you the truth, he snores so loudly that people in adjoining rooms have complained in the past. I'm not sure it'd be worth it to you." "No problem," the tired Marine assured him. "I'll take it." The next morning the Marine came down to breakfast bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. "How'd yo ... read more

A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and said, "Your first job will be to sweep out the store." "But I'm a college graduate," the young man replied indignantly. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that," said the manager. "Here, give me the broom – I'll show you how."

At a recent software engineering management course in the US, the participants were given an awkward question to answer. ‘If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, how many of you would disembark immediately?’ Among the forest of raised hands, only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay onboard. With his team’s software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.