Grab Bag JOW #819

First, this is Palindrome Week - 6-12-16 through 6-19-16.  The date is the same forward and backward.  It is also my unofficial start of summer – when we have three consecutive days of 90 degrees or more.  The heavy rains have held back the heat but now it has arrived in a big way with lows of 79 degrees and very, very humid.

My jokes this week are sort of a grab bag of various types and varieties.  I was going to throw in a shaggy dog story but ran out of room.  Maybe next week.

The SETI project is searching for intelligent life in outer space.  Apparently they have given up looking here.

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A construction worker accidentally cuts off his ear with an electric saw.  When the ambulance arrives the medics tell him if they can recover his ear they can reattach it.  So his co-workers start hunting for the missing piece.

One man finds an ear and holds it up.  “Is this it?”

The construction worker looks at it and says, “No, that’s not mine.  Mine had a pencil behind it.”

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The family gathered at Grandma’s for dinner.  When little Johnny got his plate he started eating.

“Johnny, wait until we have said our prayer,” his mother told him.

“I don’t need to.”

“Johnny you know we always say a prayer before eating at our house,” his mother said with a strained look at her mother-in-law.

“That’s at our house,” Johnny explained, “but this is Grandma’s house and she knows how to cook.”

…………………..

·         Sign at a bar: “We do not serve women.  You must bring your own.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Two pieces of Interstate highway are drinking at the Roadside Bar.  They are sort of having one for the road and talking a little smack.

The first one says, “I’m I-10!  Atlantic to Pacific! Long and strong!  Highest speed limits on the whole system.”

The other one snorts.  “You got nuthin’.  I am I-95.  Lifeblood of the East Coast.  Always full and always busy.  Bartender, more whiskey.”

As the bartender is refilling their glasses a small gravel and dirt trail comes in and sits at the end of the bar.  All the other roads move away as he orders.

“Bartender, I’ll have a root beer.”

One of the interstates snorts derisively.  “Ha, root beer?”

The other interstate stops him.  “Don’t mess with that one,” he cautions.

“Why not?”

“Cuz he’s a total cycle path.”

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 

A little boy was waiting in the doctor’s office with his mother when a late term pregant lady came in.  Being inquisitive he immediately asked her, “Why is your stomach so big?”

“I’m having a baby,” she replied with a smile.

The little boy’s eyes got big.  “Is the baby in your stomach?”

“He sure is.”

With a puzzled look the boy asked, “Is it a good baby?”

At this point the expectant mother is thinking the little boy is very cute.  “Yes,” she assured him, he is a very good baby.”

“Then why did you eat him?”

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There is a story about an old French lady who had run a small shop in her rural French village for years.  One day a huge corporate supermarket opened across the road from her place.  They put out signs advertising their prices including one that said “Butter – 10 francs.”

The next day the little old lady put up a sign on her window. “Butter – 9 francs”

The supermarket responded with a sign “Butter – 8 francs”

Sure enough, the next day the little shop’s sign read “Butter – 7 francs.”

This went on until the supermarket was selling butter for only 4 francs.

One of the lady’s customers pointed to the sign and said, “Madam, you cannot keep your prices so low for long.  These big company can use their buying power to sell products cheaper than a little store like yours.  Butter costs them more than what they are charging for it.”

The little old lady leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially.  “Monsieur, I don’t even sell butter.”

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The boss of a small company felt he was not getting enough respect.  So in an effort to change his employee’s attitudes he posted a sign on his door saying ‘I am the boss.’

Next day there was a post-it note next to it saying ‘Your wife wants her sign back.’

And finally an old story I learned in Project Manager school.

A toothpaste factory had a problem.  They had just opened a new plant.  They discovered that they sometimes shipped an empty box without the toothpaste inside.  They was a real challenge to their customer satisfaction and perceived quality.  Understanding how important this was the CEO assembled his top people.  They decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. 

The project followed the usual arc of such things: budget, project manager, RFP, selection of vendor and development of the solution.  Six months and two million dollars later they had a fix that worked, delivered on time and on budget.  Everyone was pleased.

They solved the project by using a high precision scale that would weigh each box as it came down the line and would sound a bell and flash lights when a box was too light.  The line would stop and someone would walk over, remove the defective box and restart the line.  As a result, they had no more empty boxes being shipped.

With no customer complaints, the CEO thought the millions were well spent.  He continued to review the number of empty boxes picked up by the new scale.  The first week that number was entirely consistent with projections.  The next two weeks, however there were no empty boxes detected at all.  He should have seen a least a dozen.  He had the engineers run tests.  No, no more empty boxes were being shipped and the equipment was operating perfectly. 

Puzzled the CEO went down to the factory and checked out the part of the line where the new, expensive precision scale was installed.  He noticed a cheap desk fan set up just before the scale.

“What is that fan doing there?” he asked the supervisor.

“Oh, that,” the supervisor replied. “Bert, the retired Chief Petty Officer we just hired put it there.  He got tired of having to walk over and restart the line every time the scale detected an empty box. The fan just blows the empty boxes into that bin.”