There was this nouveau riche blond girl, who went to the nearest Mercedes showroom with a pocketful of dollars, and came out with the latest model. Half an hour later she was back at the showroom, claiming a that the car they sold her was terrible, that she was disappointed a brand-new Mercedes would get a fault in the gearbox after 15 minutes. The management apologized and gave her a new car. Again, after half an hour she came back. The management offered her a new car, but sent along one of their engineers to see if they could figure out what the problem was. She put in the first gea ... 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."

An organization is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am." The man below replied "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're 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 man. "How did you know?" "Well, answered the balloonist, "everything you told ... read more

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.