Narrative joke delivery styles, punchline pacing, and comedy formats for people with specific chaos preferences from Chaotic Meh — organized so the algorithm can pretend this place has adult supervision.
Tom had this problem of getting up late in the morning and was always late for work. His boss was mad at him and threatened to fire him if he didn’t do something about it. So Tom went to his doctor who gave him a pill and told him to take it before he went to bed.
Tom slept well and in fact beat the alarm in the morning. He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.
“Boss”, he said, “The pill actually worked!”
“That’s all fine” said the boss, “But where were you yesterday?”
The boss joined a group of his workers at the coffee urn and told a series of jokes he’d heard recently. Everybody laughed loudly. Everybody, that is, except Mike.
When he noticed that he was getting no reaction from Mike, the boss said, “What’s the matter, Mike? No sense of humor?”
“My sense of humor is fine,” he said. “But I don’t have to laugh. I’m quitting tomorrow.”
The company hires a new man. He was supposed to start work on a Monday, but instead of showing up, he calls his new boss. “I’m sick,” he says. Boss excuses him.
The man shows up Tuesday morning and works throughout the week, greatly impressing everyone with his diligence and ability.
The next Monday, he once again calls his boss. “I’m sick,” he says. Boss reluctantly excuses him, but notices that this is the second Monday in a row.
Once again, the man shows up Tuesday morning and works throughout the week, even faster and better than the previous week.
The following Monday, he calls his boss again. “I’m sick.” Boss excuses him, but decides to call the man in to talk on Tuesday.
Tuesday comes and as soon as the man shows up, the boss calls him into his office. “What gives?” asks the boss. “I can see you’re a hard worker, but you’ve only been here three weeks and you’ve called in sick every Monday.”
The man says, “Well, my sister is in a bad marriage and I go over to console her every Monday morning before work. One thing leads to another, and we end up having sex all day long.”
“Your sister!” says the boss. “That’s disgusting.”
The man says, “I told you I was sick.”
There’s a boss who hired two workers (Jack and Jill) last summer as temporaries. The summer is now over, and he doesn’t have the money to keep both workers on, but he CAN keep one. He’s got a problem because they’re both good workers. So he decides to let fate settle his dilemma by firing the first one of the two that goes to the water fountain the next morning.
Jill is the first to arrive, and, having a headache, takes two aspirins to the water cooler. The boss says to himself, “Well, that’s it then. It’s gotta be Jill.”
He calls Jill into his office. “Money is tight, and I don’t have enough to keep you AND Jack on the payroll. So I either have to lay you or Jack off.”
To which Jill replied: “Well, you’ll just have to jack off, because I have a headache.”
A man was being interviewed for a job. “Were you in the service?” asked the interviewer.
“Yes, I was a Marine,” responded the applicant.
“Did you see any active duty?”
“I was in Vietnam for two years and I have a partial disability.”
“May I ask what happened?”
“Well, I had a grenade go off between my legs and I lost both testicles.”
“You’re hired. You can start Monday at 10 a.m.”
“When does everyone else start? I don’t want any preferential treatment because of my disability.”
“Everyone else starts at 7 a.m. but I might as well be honest with you. Nothing gets done between 7 and 10. We just sit around scratching our balls trying to decide what to do first.”
A company, feeling it was time for a shake-up, hires a new CEO. This new boss is determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO notices a guy leaning on a wall. The room is full of workers and he wants to let them know he means business!
The CEO walks up to the guy and asks, “And how much money do you make a week?”
A little surprised, the young fellow looks at him and replies, “I make three hundred dollars a week. Why?”
The CEO then hands the guy $1,200 in cash and screams, “Here’s four weeks’ pay — now GET OUT and don’t come back!”
Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room and asks, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-off did here?”
With a sheepish grin, one of the other workers mutters, “He’s the pizza delivery guy from Domino’s.”
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.”
One day, a sign appeared in an office window. It read: “Help wanted. Must type seventy words a minute. Must be computer literate. Must be bilingual. An equal opportunity employer.” A dog ambling down the street saw the sign, walked in, and applied for the job.
The office manager said, “I can’t hire a dog for this job.”
The dog pointed to the line: “An equal opportunity employer.”
So the manager said, “OK, take this letter and type it.”
The dog went off to the word processor and returned a minute later with the finished letter, perfectly formatted.
The manager said, “Here’s a problem. Write a computer program for it and run it.”
Fifteen minutes later, the dog came back with the correct answer.
The manager still wasn’t convinced. “I can’t hire a dog for this position. You’ve got to be bilingual.”
The dog looked up at the manager and said, “Meow.”
Interviewer: Why is a thicker conductor necessary to carry a current in A.C. as compared to D.C.?
Student: An AC current goes up and down (drawing a sinusoid) and requires more space inside the wire, so the wire has to be thicker.
Interviewer: How will you tell if that wall outlet carries AC or DC?
Student: I will put my finger in. If it is pushed away, it is DC. If it gets stuck, it was AC.
Interviewer: How will you reverse direction of an induction motor?
Student: I will remove the four bolts at the base, turn the motor around, and put back the bolts.
Interviewer: How do you start a synchronous motor?
Student: Vrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (in rising pitch)
Interviewer: Stop! Stop!
Student: rrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (in falling pitch)
Interviewer: How do you limit surge current within an integrated circuit?
Student: By using a miniature circuit breaker.
Interviewer: Why does a capacitor block DC but allow AC to pass through?
Student: See, a capacitor is like this —“~~”—, OK. DC comes straight, like this ——————————, and the capacitor stops it. But AC goes UP, DOWN, UP, DOWN and jumps right over the capacitor!
Interviewer: What is a step-up transformer?
Student: A transformer that is put on top of electric poles.
Interviewer (smiling): And then what is a step-down transformer?
Student (hesitantly): Uh — a transformer that is put in the basement or in a pit?
Interviewer (pouncing): Then what do you call a transformer that is installed on the ground?
Interviewer (impatiently): Well?
Student (triumphantly): A stepless transformer, sir!
A magazine recently ran a “Dilbert Quotes” contest. The writers were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type managers. Here are some of the submissions:
1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks. (This was the winning entry; Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA)
2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff? (Programming intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)
4. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business. (Accounting Mgr., Electric Boat Company)
5. This project is so important, we can’t let things that are more important interfere with it. (Advertising/Mktg. Mgr., UPS)
6. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them. (R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing / 3M Corp.)
7. My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a twenty-five-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn’t edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)
8. Quote from the boss: “Teamwork is a lot of people doing what ‘I’ say.” (Mktg. executive, Citrix Corporation)
9. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, “That would be better for me.” (Shipping Executive, FTD Florists)
10. We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees. (AT&T Long Lines Division)
11. We recently received a memo from senior management saying, “This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above.” (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
12. One day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, “If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!” (New Business Mgr., Hallmark Cards)
13. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company’s training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the “pedagogical approach” used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR Director’s office, and was told that the executive VP wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn’t stand for “perverts” (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired, with the word “pedagogical” circled in red. The HR Manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation letter by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)
14. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally circulated memo from a large communications company: “Lucent Technologies is endeavoringly determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!”
