A DEAD
HORSE
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you
discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy
is to dismount.
However, in business we often try other
strategies with a dead horse, including the
following:
Buying a
stronger whip.
Changing
riders.
Saying
things like “This is the way we have always ridden this
horse."
Appointing a
committee to study the horse.
Arranging to
visit other sites to see how they ride dead
horses.
Increasing
the standards to ride dead horses.
Appointing a
team to revive the dead horse.
Creating a
training session to increase our riding
ability.
Comparing
the state of dead horses in today’s
environment.
Change the
requirements, declaring, “This horse is not
dead.”
Hire
contractors to ride the dead
horse.
Harnessing
several dead horses together for increased
speed.
Declaring
that “No horse is too dead to
beat.”
Providing
additional funding to increase the horse’s
performance.
Do a Cost
Analysis Study to see if contractors can ride it
cheaper.
Purchase a
product to make dead horses run
faster.
Declare the
horse is “better, faster and cheaper”
dead.
Form a
quality circle to find uses for dead
horses.
Revisit the
performance requirements for
horses.
Say this
horse was procured with cost as an independent
variable.
Promote the
dead horse to a supervisory
position.
CANADIANS
On the sixth
day God turned to the Archangel Gabriel and
said:
“Today I am
going to create a land called Canada, it
will be a land of outstanding natural beauty. It shall have
tall majestic mountains full of mountain goats, and
eagles, beautiful sparkling lakes bountiful with bass
and trout, forests full of elk and moose, high cliffs
over-looking sandy beaches with an abundance of sea
life, and rivers stocked with
salmon.”
God
continued, “I shall make the land rich in oil so as to
make the inhabitants prosper, I shall call these
inhabitants Canadians, and they shall be known as the
most friendly people on the
earth.”
“But Lord,”
asked Gabriel “don’t you think you are being too
generous to these Canadians?”
“Not
really,” replied God “just wait and see the neighbors I
am going to give them.”
THE
SENIOR CITIZEN’S
ALPHBET
A is for
arthritis
B is for a
bad back
C is for the
chest pains.
Corned beef?
Cardiac?
D is for
dental decay, dentures and decline
E is for
eyesight – can’t read that top
line
F is for
fissures and fluid retention
G is for gas
(which I’d rather not mention) and other
gastrointestinal glitches
H is high
blood pressure
I is for
itches
J is for
joints that are failing to flex
L is for
libido – what happened to sex?
Wait! I forgot about K
for bad knees
(I’ve got a
few gaps in my M – memory)
N is for
nerve (pinched) and neck (stiff) and
neurosis
O is for
osteo-
P for
porosis
Q is for
queasiness.
Fatal?
Just flu?
R is for
reflux – one meal becomes two
S is for
sleepless nights counting my fears
T is for
tinnitus - bells in my ears
U is for
urinary difficulties
V is for
vertigo
W is
worry
About what
the X – as in X-ray will find
But though
the word terminal rushes to mind,
I’m proud,
as each
Y – year –
goes by, to reveal a reservoir of
undiminished
Z – zeal –
For checking the symptoms my body
deployed,
And keeping
my twenty-six doctors
employed.
1 in
360
During a
field exercise at Camp Lejeune, N.C., my squad was on a
night patrol through some thick brush. Halfway through,
we realized we’d lost our map. The patrol
navigator informed us, “Our odds are 1
in 360 that we’ll get out of
here.”
“How did you
come up with that?” someone asked.
“Well,” he
replied, “one of the degrees on the compass has to be
right.”
WACKY 911
CALLS
The
following excerpts were taken from the book, “What’s the
Number for 911?” by New York Times Bestselling author,
Leland Gregory.
Caller: “I’d like to
make a unanimous complaint, so don’t use my
name.”
Caller: “Could you send
the police to my house?”
Call-taker: “What’s wrong
there?”
Caller: “I called home
and someone answered the phone, but I’m not
there.”
Caller: “I’m reporting a
deer on the road.
I almost hit it.”
Call-taker: “Is the deer
alive?”
Caller: “Oh, no, it’s
run over.
Many, many cars. Again and again,
and – OH NO!!! NOT AGAIN!!!
Caller: “Am I talking to
a real person, or is this a
recording?”
Caller: “We might
(cough) need the fire department here
(cough)”.
Caller: “Is it okay for
a civilian to take a person to the hospital, or does the
ambulance have to do it?”
Caller: (irate) “That’s ‘W’ as
in Williams and ‘Y’ as in why.”
Caller (on
realizing the police are on the way): Get that keg
outta here, dude!”
Caller: “He’s not
breathing!”
Call-taker: “Can you get the
phone closer to him?”
Caller: “WHY? You want
to hear he’s not breathing, too?”
Call-talker: “Does she have
any weapons?”
Caller: “Well, she has
real long fingernails.”
Call-taker: “We’ll need a
description of him.”
Caller: “He’s a
lawyer.”
Caller: “No, she just
didn’t fall … I helped her!”
Complaint
about a stolen mailbox:
Call-taker: “What is your
address?”
Caller: “It’s
gone.”
Nurse: “This is Room
314D – That’s ‘D’ as in dead.”
Caller: “I’m scared, I
just got a Ouija board for my birthday, and now there’s
writing on my wall and I can’t get it off … this thing
is going back to K-Mart first thing in the
morning!”
DEFENSIVE DRIVING
COURSE
One of my
co-workers got a speeding ticket and was attending a
defensive-driving course to have points erased from his
license.
The instructor, a police officer, emphasized that
being on time was crucial and that the classroom doors
would be locked when each session
began.
Just after
one class started, someone knocked on the locked
door. The
officer opened it and asked, “Why are you
late?”
The student
replied, “I was trying not to get another ticket.” The officer let
him in.
DEAD MEN READ NO
MAIL
My father
died on Jan 2, 1995. He left no
forwarding address.
Therefore,
it fell to me to collect his mail. I didn’t expect
much really, since my sisters and I had been careful to
notify his bank, insurance agent and a host of other
businesses that one of their customers was no
more.
You would
think a death notice would cut down on the amount of
correspondence from those firms. Quite the
contrary.
Instead – for months, mind you – my deceased
father continued to receive mail from companies that had
been told of his passing but pressed on, determined to
contact him anyway.
The first to
hope for a reply from beyond the grave was my father’s
bank.
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
Our records
indicate payment is due for overdraft protection on your
checking account.
Efforts to contact you have proven
unsuccessful.
Therefore, we are automatically withdrawing your
monthly $28.00 service charge from your account. Please adjust
your records accordingly.
Sincerely,
The Phoenix
Branch”
“Dear
Phoenix Branch,
This is to
notify you once again that Mr. Hanson died Jan 2,
1995. It is
therefore unlikely he will be overdrawing his
account.
Please close his account, and adjust your books
accordingly.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
Later that
same week, I receive this note from Dad’s insurance
company.
Again, this is a firm that had been told in no
uncertain terms of his death.
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
It’s time to
renew your auto insurance policy! To continue your
coverage, you must send $54.17 to this office
immediately.
Failure to do so will result in the cancellation
of your policy, and interruption of your coverage.
Sincerely,
Your
Insurance Agent”
“Dear
Insurance Agent,
This is to
remind you that Mr. Hanson has been dead since
January. As
such, the odds he’ll be involved in a collision are
quite minimal.
Please cancel the policy, and adjust your books
accordingly.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
The next
day, I went to my mailbox to find
this:
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
Let me
introduce myself.
I am a psychic reader, and it is very important
that you contact me immediately. I sense that you
are about to enter a time of unprecedented financial
prosperity.
Please call the enclosed 900 number immediately,
so I can tell you how best to take full advantage of the
opportunities that are coming your
way.
Sincerely,
Your Psychic
Reader”
“Dear
Psychic Reader,
My father
regrets he will be unable to call your 900 number. As a psychic
reader, I’m sure you already know my father is dead, and
had been for more than three weeks when you mailed your
letter to him.
I sense my father would be more than happy to
take you up on your offer of a psychic reading, should
you care to meet with him
personally.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson
P.S. Should
you be in contact with my father in the future, please
ask him if he’d like to renew his car
insurance.”
A few months
of calm passed, and then these
arrived:
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
Our records
indicate a balance of $112 has accrued for overdraft
protection on your checking account. Efforts to
contact you have proven unsuccessful. Please pay the
minimum amount due, or contact this office to make other
arrangements.
We appreciate your business and look forward to
serving all of your future borrowing needs.
Sincerely,
Your Bank’s
San Diego District Office”
“Dear San
Diego District Office,
I am writing
to you for the third time now to tell you my father died
in January.
Since then, the number of checks he’s written has
dropped dramatically. Being dead, he
has no plans to use his overdraft protection or pay even
the minimum amount due for a service he no longer
needs. As
for future borrowing needs, well, don’t hold your
breath.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
Records show
you owe a balance of $54.17 to our office or we will be
forced to take legal action to collect the
debt.
Sincerely,
Your
Insurance Agent Collection Agency”
“Dear
Collection Agency,
I told your
client. Now
I’m telling you.
Dad’s dead.
He doesn’t need insurance. He’s dead. Dead,
dead, dead.
I doubt even your lawyer can change that. Please adjust
your books accordingly.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
A few more
months, and:
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
Our records
show an unpaid balance of $224 has accrued for overdraft
protection on your checking account. Our efforts to
contact you have proven unsuccessful. Please remit the
amount in full to this office, or the matter will be
turned over to a collection agency. Such action will
adversely affect your credit
history.
Sincerely,
Your Bank’s
Los Angeles Regional Office”
“Dear Los
Angeles Regional Office,
I am writing
for the fourth time to the fourth person at the fourth
address to tell your bank that my father passed away in
January.
Since that time, I’ve watched with a mixture of
amazement and amusement as your bank continues to
transact business with him. Now, you are
even threatening his credit history. It should come
as no surprise that you have received little response
from my deceased father. It should also
be small news that his credit history is of minor
importance to him now. For the fourth
and final time, Please adjust you books
accordingly.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
“Dear Mr.
Hanson,
This is your
final notice of payment due to your insurance
agent. If
our firm does not receive payment of $54.17, we will
commence legal action on the matter. Please contact
us at once.
Sincerely,
Your
Insurance Agent’s Collection
Agency”
“Dear
Insurance Agent’s Collection
Agency,
You may
contact my father via the enclosed 900
number.
Sincerely,
Scott
Hanson”
It has now
been a couple of months since I’ve heard from these
firms.
Either the people writing these letters finally
believe my father is dead, or they themselves have died
and are now receiving similar
correspondence.
Actually,
there has been a lesson in these letters. Any one of them
would be cause for great worry, if sent to a living
person. The
dead are immune from corporate bullying. There’s nothing
like dying to put business correspondence in its proper
perspective.
Perhaps
that’s the best reason not to fear death, there’s no
post office there.
Personal comment: If you think the
foregoing could never happen, my father had been dead
for over 6 months and he received a summons to report
for Jury Duty in County
Court.
CARRIER
LANDINGS
Flying into
a Middle East airport, my co-pilot and I reviewed our
flight plan for the trip back to the USS
Enterprise.
We were to pick up a Navy captain, and the
experience had taught me that even seasoned vets turn
white-knuckled during carrier
landings.
Once the
captain was strapped in, I turned around to welcome him
aboard.
“Sir,” I asked, “will this be your first carrier
landing?”
Looking at
me with disdain, he opened his inflatable vest to
display gold wings above five rows of ribbons. “Son,” he said,
“I have over 500 carrier landings in jet
fighters.”
“That’s good
to hear,” my co-pilot said, winking at me, “because this
will be our first.”
DEFLATED
EGO
I’m a
counselor who helps coordinate support groups for
visually impaired adults. Many
participants have a condition known as macular
degeneration, which makes it very difficult for them to
distinguish facial features. I had just been
assigned to a new group and was introducing
myself.
Knowing that
many in the group would not be able to see me well, I
jokingly said, “For those of you who can’t see me, I’ve
been told that I look like a cross between Paul Newman
and Robert Redford.” Immediately, one
woman called out, “We’re not THAT
blind!”
DATING
AGAIN
After four
years of separation, my wife and I finally divorced
amicably. I
wanted to date again, but I had no idea of how to start,
so I decided to look in the personals column of the
local newspaper.
After reading through all the listings, I circled
three that seemed possible in terms of age and interest,
but I put off calling them.
Two days
later, there was a message on my answering machine from
my ex-wife.
“I came over to your house to borrow some tools
today and saw the ads you circled in the paper. Don’t call the
one in the second column. It’s
me.”
MEMORY
Two elderly
gentlemen are playing cards one Saturday evening as they
have done for the past 35 years. Max, the older,
had been having problems remembering what cards were
what, and usually needed help from his
wife.
At the end
of the card game Ed said to Max, “You did very good
tonight.
You didn’t need any help at all. Why is
that?”
Max replied,
“Why ever since my wife sent me to that memory school, I
haven’t had any problems at all.”
“Memory
school?
What memory school?”
Max though
for a moment, “Oh, what’s that flower that’s red with
thorns? A
really pretty flower…?”
“A
rose?”
“Yeah…that’s
it!” Max
turned to his wife and mumbled, “Hey, Rose! What’s the name
of that memory school you sent me
to?”
LETTER TO THE
IRS
This is a
real letter submitted to the IRS in the midst of a year
when weird and bizarre denial of dependents, exemptions,
and credits were imposed. I believe the
letter speaks for
itself.
Dear
Sirs:
I am
responding to your letter denying the deduction for two
of the three dependents I claimed on my 1994 Federal Tax
return.
Thank you.
I have questioned whether these are my children
or not for years.
They are evil and expensive. It’s only fair
that since they are minors and not my responsibility,
that the government (who evidently is taxing me more to
care for these waifs) knows something about them and
what to expect over the next year. You may apply
next year to reassign them to me and reinstate the
deduction.
This year they are yours!
The oldest,
Kristen, is now 17. She is
brilliant.
Ask her!
I suggest you put her to work in your office
where she can answer people’s questions about their
returns.
While she has no formal training, it has not
seemed to hamper her knowledge of any other subject you
can name.
Taxes should be a breeze; next year she is going
to college.
I think it’s wonderful that you will now be
responsible for that little
expense.
While you
mull that over, keep in mind that she has a truck. It doesn’t run
at the moment so you have the immediate decision of
appropriating some Department of Defense funds to fix
the vehicle or getting up early to drive her to
school.
Kristen also has a boyfriend. Oh joy. While she
possesses all of the wisdom of the universe, her alleged
mother and I have felt it best to occasionally remind
her of the virtues of abstinence, and in the face of
overwhelming passion, safe sex. This is always
uncomfortable and I am quite relieved you will be
handling this in the future. May I suggest
that you reinstate Joycelyn Elders, who had a rather
good handle on the problem.
Patrick is
14. I’ve
had my suspicions about this one. His eyes are a
little close together for normal people. He may be a tax
examiner himself one day if you do not incarcerate him
first. In
February, I was awakened at three in the morning by a
police officer who was bringing Pat home. He and his
friends were TP’ing houses. In the future
would you like him delivered to the local IRS office or
to Ogden, Utah?
Kids at 14 will do almost anything on a
dare. His
hair is purple.
Permanent dye, temporary dye, what’s the big
deal? Learn
to deal with it.
You’ll have plenty of time as he is sitting out a
few days of school after instigating a food fight. I’ll take care
of filing your phone number with the vice
principal.
Oh yes, he and all of his friends have raging
hormones.
This is the house of testosterone and it will be
much more peaceful when he lives in your home. DO NOT leave any
of them unsupervised with girls, explosives, flammables,
inflatables, vehicles, or telephones. (I’m sure that
you will find telephones a source of unimaginable
amusement, and be sure to lock out the 900 and 976
numbers!)
Heather is
an alien.
She slid through a time warp and appeared quite
by magic one year.
I’m sure this one is yours. She is 10 going
on 21. She
came from a bad trip in the sixties. She wears
tie-dyed clothes, beads, sandals, and hair that looks
like Tiny Tim’s.
Fortunately you will be raising my taxes to help
offset the pinch of her remedial reading courses. Hooked on
Phonics is so expensive the schools dropped it. Good news! You can buy it
yourself for half the amount of the deduction that you
are denying!
It’s quite obvious that we were terrible parents
(ask the other two) so they have helped raise this one
to a new level of terror. She cannot speak
English.
Most people under twenty understand the curious
pâtois she fashioned out of valley girls/boys in the
hood/reggae/yuppie/political doublespeak. I don’t. The school sends
her to a speech pathologist who has her roll her
R’s. It
added a refreshing Mexican/Irish touch to her
voice. She
wears hats backwards, pants baggy and wants one of her
ears pierced four more times. There is a
fascination with tattoos that worries me but I am sure
that you can handle it. Bring a truck
when you come to get her, as she sort of “nests” in her
room and I think that it would be easier to move the
entire thing than find out what it is really made
of. You
denied two of the three exemptions so it is only fair
you get to pick which two you will take. I prefer that
you take the youngest, I still go bankrupt with
Kristen’s college but then I am free! If you take the
two oldest then I still have time for counseling before
Heather becomes a teenager. If you take the
two girls then I won’t feel so bad about putting Patrick
in a military academy. Please let me
know of your decision as soon as possible as I have
already increased the withholding on my W-4 to cover the
$395 in additional tax and to make a down payment on an
airplane.
Yours
Truly,
Bob
NOTE:
The taxpayer in question added this caveat at a
later date:
“Rats! They sent me the
refund and allowed the
deductions.”
SAGE ADVICE FROM
CHILDREN
Never trust
a dog to watch your food.
Patrick, Age 10
When you
want something expensive, ask your
grandparents.
Matthew, Age 12
Never talk
back to a teacher whose eyes and ears are
twitching.
Andrew, Age 9
Wear a hat
when feeding seagulls.
Rocky, Age 9
Sleep in
your clothes so you’ll be dressed in the
morning.
Stephanie, Age 8
Never try to
hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of
milk.
Rosemary, Age 7
Don’t flush
the toilet when your dad’s in the
shower.
Lama, Age
10
Never ask
for anything that costs more than five dollars when your
parents are doing taxes.
Carrol, Age 9
Never bug a
pregnant mom.
Nicholas, Age 11
Don’t ever
be too full for dessert.
Kelly, Age 10
When your
dad is mad and asks you, “Do I look stupid?” don’t
answer him.
Heather, Age 16
Never tell
your mom her diet’s not working.
Michael, Age 14
Don’t pick
on your sister when she’s holding a baseball
bat.
Joel, Age 12
When you get
a bad grade in school, show it to your mom when she’s on
the phone.
Alyesha, Age 13
