Category: Humor

LinkedIn All-Stars Discover Bosses Furious

Earlier this year LinkedIn celebrated its tenth anniversary.  With ten years under its belt, the Silicon Valley tech giant has finally fallen prey to researchers.  The findings aren’t pretty.  Among a newly released 500-page report there are some notable discoveries:

  • 63% of LinkedIn Users report spending time each day to see if the infinite scroll really is infinite.
    • Of those users, 25% admit feeling “genuinely disappointed” when, upon reaching the end, they read “There are no more updates at this time” instead of congratulations for beating the game.
  • 84% of Users have achieved All-Star Profile Strength.
    • Of those Users, 100% believe they are more likely to receive a promotion within the next 6 months because of it.
      • Of those Users, zero worked in companies whose promotion decisions factored in their employee’s LinkedIn Profile Strength.

And most damning,

  • After not having the heart to crush their employee’s hopes and dreams and tell them, “No, browsing LinkedIn is not what I’m paying you to do,” 100% of Bosses spend at least 10-minutes wishing for the “good ol’ days” when employees earned their pay.

Finally, the researchers noted first, that despite these findings, employees generally felt that they were more productive because of LinkedIn and second, that more research should be done to validate their findings.

1 + 1 = 2. Right?

Tony was a nice enough looking guy.  A new member to Gold’s Gym, he sat across from me with a look of genuine interest.  He, the student.  Me, the teacher.

He liked to laugh.  I could tell that right away.  That was always a relief when starting the process.

“We’re going to start by using what we call the 10-10-10.  Ten exercises, ten workouts, ten times.  While it seems easy, and not very manly, we need to start somewhere and this is it.”

“Okay, sounds good…  I really want to know about about dieting too,” Tony furthered the conversation.

“What questions do you have?  I’m kinda particular about diet advice.”

“Well, I guess I just want to get my six-pack back.”

“That’s it?  That’s simple.  No bread, no fruit, no dairy.  If you’re on a budget, spend all your money on protein powders, tuna, and rice.”

“Really?  It’s that easy?”

“Yep, I’ll tell you how much rice to eat a day, and you can eat as much tuna and protein powder as you can afford.  The fat will be gone in no time.”

“That’s cool.  When I have my six-pack back, the hair on my stomach will go away too, right?”

“Huh?”

“When I had my six-pack, I didn’t have any hair on my stomach.  And the bodybuilders that are all ripped in the magazines don’t have any hair.  I just figured that being that muscular prevented the hair from growing.”

“Uh-huh.  Well, unfortunately, in this part of the country, at this time of the year, no, that isn’t the case.  You’ll have to shave like the rest of us.”

Blonde Guy Joke

The three men sat, legs dangling over the unfinished building’s ledge.  It was lunchtime.  Diaz opened his lunch to discover a burrito waiting for consumption.  He lamented to his friends O’Shay and Jones, “Man, I hate burritos.  Everyday I open up my lunch, and everyday there is a burrito.  In fact, I hate burritos so much that if I find a burrito in this thing tomorrow, I’m jumping off.”  Surprisingly, this little rant did not rattle O’Shay and Jones.

O’Shay opened his lunch next.  Dejected, he cried, “Are you kiddin’ me?  Corned beef and cabbage?!  Again?  I’m with you Diaz.  If I find this in my lunch tomorrow, I’m jumping off.”

Smiling happily, Jones unwrapped his lunch.  It was a bologna sandwich on white bread.  “I can’t believe it.  How many years have I been eating bologna on white bread?  I’m with you fellas.  Tomorrow, if this is in my lunch again, I’m jumping.”

The next day, the lunch buzzer sounded and the three men went to the edge of the building to eat.  Always first to go, Diaz opened his lunch.  A burrito.  “Well guys.  My word is my bond.  I said I’d jump, so I’m jumping.”  O’Shay and Jones didn’t talk much after that, instead they occupied themselves with their meals.  Upon opening his lunch, O’Shay looked resignedly into Jones eyes and said, “Well Jones, I hope you have more luck than us.  I’m staring at corned beef and cabbage, yet again.  It’s time.”  And off the ledge he went.  On his own now, Jones went about opening his lunch as normal.  “I guess I should have seen this coming,” he said.  “Bologna on white bread.  Diaz…O’Shay…wherever you are, it looks like you don’t have to wait long to see me again.”  And off the ledge he went.

Their wives decided to combine the three funerals into one since the guys were nearly inseparable while alive.   It was a nice service.  Brief, but nice.

Now, the wives heard through the grapevine what other construction workers had overheard their husbands say.  Diaz’s wife spoke up first.  “If only he would have told me he didn’t want anymore burritos, I would’ve made him something else.”  Next was O’Shay’s wife.  “I know what you mean.  He had never complained about his lunch before.  If I would have known he was sick of corned beef and cabbage, I would’ve made him something else.”  The two women looked inquisitively into Jones’ wife’s eyes.  Did she have the same remorse?  The same guilt?  Barely able to find the space between sobs to squeeze out the words, she finally said, “He packed his own lunch!”

The Reason Angels Have Hands In Addition To Wings

It happened back in the early 2000s.  He couldn’t remember the year exactly, but for some reason he remembered seeing a PT Cruiser drive by when she said it.  They were eating at a restaurant, him and his woman.  She had just spilled some food on her favorite pair of pants.  He was not surprised.  Hell–by this time detergent companies had specifically developed pen-size on-the-go cleaner in an effort to save relationships.  And on this occasion his girlfriend said, “What’s the point of trying to not spill if I have a Tide-stick in my purse?  They work wonders!”  Unintended consequences as they are, the invention of Tide-sticks resulted in women, his girlfriend included, becoming more daring while eating.

What happened next was unbelievable.  Women everywhere just gave up on trying to not spill while eating.  At first this was all silly.  He would even find himself laughing at all the funny ways women would splink.  Splinking–that’s what they called it.  Women would intentionally miss their mouth in the most nonsensical situation possible and capture the result on camera.  Like planking and duckface before it, the photrend caught on quickly.  In the first month, the major social media players actually shutdown for an entire day because of the unexpected traffic.  People weren’t laughing for very long though.  What no one seemed to notice was that women weren’t eating as much food anymore.  Weren’t-eating-as-much-food, quickly became weren’t-eating-enough-food.  Sadly, unable to resist the Western-trend, the third world suffered the initial blow.  Never had the planet seen such merciless loss of life.  Inevitably, all eyes turned upward.

Make no mistake, God was aware of the situation.  He just hadn’t exactly prepared for this.  Finally, Michael spoke up.

“I have an idea.”

“I’m listening.”

“All these eons, I’ve trusted in your infinite wisdom.  Specifically, I tried to never complain that you gave the humans hands, while we only got wings.  But with the situation they’ve got themselves into down there, I can’t stand idly by anymore.  It’s time God.  Give us–your messengers of mercy–hands.  With hands we’ll be able to answer their prayers.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Here’s how it’ll work.  We’ll be waiting and watching for the female humans to take a bite.  Then, as the food falls we’ll fly in and reach out, with our new additional appendages, to save the falling food.  In that same instant, we’ll return it to the plate and they’ll never know we intervened.  After a couple miraculous interventions, they’re sure to catch on.  It’s the only way.”

In the next moment Michael and the other heralds were happily dashing around the planet using their new hands to ensure women reached satiation.

It worked.

He thought enough time had passed, so he finally delivered his joke, “You know hon…I always said it would take an act of God for a woman to eat a meal without spilling.”

“Not funny.”

He was wrong.

The Lacking Ingredient

At first, like everyone, he was only slightly annoyed.  As time ticked on, however, his curiosity grew.  What made them such positive people?  After all, they could no longer eat bread.

He couldn’t live without bread.  Really, he couldn’t–he had checked.  Right on the Hot-n-Ready box it listed bread as an ingredient.  What could he possibly eat instead of pizza on weekends?  Next he lifted the stack of pizza boxes off the top of the trash can to retrieve the wrapping on his most recent McDouble; sure enough, the material encasing the all-beef patties and cheese was bread.  Even if he was able to find a pizza substitute, there is no way he could give-up his lunch and dinner staple.   Not finding ‘bread’ on his Canadian Hunter whiskey bottle, he thought he was in luck.  Nope.  Mr. Google decreed that ‘rye’ was another word for ‘bread’.

Flustered, he shouted to the night, “How do they do it?”  He couldn’t figure how the new wave of gluten-free eaters were able to stay so positive when life had handed them such a lemon.  Then it hit him.  Gluten itself must contain the answer.  “What even was gluten?” he wondered.  On his way to discovering its chemical signature he deduced the simple truth:  Gluten must contain a healthy amount of realism.  It had to.

Yep, life made sense again.  Until now, he had found himself unable to make sense of the situation.  He couldn’t believe that for the last year he had actually felt bad about himself when he was around glass-half-full gluten-free crowds.  With his discovery, though, he could remorselessly return to his simplistic worldview.  “Finally!” he exhaled, collapsing onto his couch.

Make no mistake, the afflicted’s resilience is remarkable.  It’s just that now he knew it wasn’t difficult to be positive–what with an ingredient lacking.

Do Your Dentures Fit Like…

Up until this very moment, he had only heard about what he recently experienced on a road trip.  Some called it heaven, others nirvana, others ecstasy.  If he had to put a name on it, he would call it “Primal Joy.”  But as he spoke those words, they sounded wrong, sounded too weak.  Suffice it to say, the feeling was unmatched, and incredibly difficult to name properly.

What caused this feeling you ask?  The great unknown.  Not just any unknown, but one that follows an especially compelling preamble.  We all have had lesser experiences of this happen in our lives.  We’re just listening to someone speak, and next thing you know they say something like, “So then I said…”  And as the “de” in “said” is made audible the anticipation builds.  Sometimes it is only mild.  Other times it is frighteningly exciting.  These instances are characterized by the listener asking themselves within these varied levels of excitement, “I wonder what he/she is going to say next?”  That is where he was at.  The billboard began, “Do your dentures fit like…”

Analyzing this for a moment, we can deduce at least three facts.  First, this is likely an ad for a dentist or orthodontist.  Second, the size and quality of the sign tell us that this denture-pusher is small time.  Third, given the small/local nature of the shop, we can expect the metaphor describing poor-denture-fit to be colloquial and meant for a very specific target audience–being the denture wearing residents of that small town; itself a group who presumably have a lot in common with each other even before counting teeth.

Surely by now, you have developed some metaphors of your own to complete the ad.  Perhaps you have the upper hand and know some denture wearing folks and have heard them lament about poor fitting dentures with witty metaphors.  Perhaps you even wear dentures.  You’ll still never guess the rest of the sign.

The metaphor proved itself worthy as he nearly shed tears while merrily explaining the sign to his fellow road warriors.

Savor this moment.  Remember that a fellow human, made of the same parts as the rest of us, decided that this was the best way to relay his services to potential customers.

Our characters own tendencies to become over-excited signaled that this creative tooth-peddler probably couldn’t live up to the fantasy he had imagined him/her to be, but that didn’t stop him from desiring to meet the individual who came up with this billboard.  If only the phone number was as memorable as this:

“Do your dentures fit like socks on a rooster?”

For reasons beyond his control, he could only assume this situation would be miserable.

Out Of Touch…The End Is Near

The students took their standardized test.  Everyone waited to see if they had learned anything over the last quarter of school.

Notable results:

When asked why a student’s performance decreased tremendously, the student replied hopefully, “Does that mean I’m out of your class?”

When told that she scored higher than her end-of-year growth goal on this the second assessment, the student says smiling sheepishly, “Oh.  That’s because I didn’t really try on the first one.”

Weirder still is that if an observer wasn’t told the students were the lowest performing in the entire country, the observer would never have guessed it.  Most students had no clue what the test scores were “out of”, yet they proceeded to celebrate and congratulate each other in precisely the same manner as the highest performing students do upon receiving grades.

What really takes the cake, however, was the “lead” teacher’s reaction to the generally positive test results.  In an email to the principal she asked:

“Do we have money we could spend as rewards for the students who are proficient or who have growth on the assessment?  How about $5 in “school cash” toward a school colors shirt/hoodie?”

Yep.  Kids who hate the–admittedly ridiculous and difficult to enforce–dress code (only really concerned with preventing the kids from wearing gang colors) that leads them to choose to just wear school t-shirts and hoodies; kids whose parents have failed to create in them any appreciable amount of dignity or self-respect from which they could base an internal motivation to succeed at anything academic; these kids are going to be happy to have earned a ratty t-shirt.

One day and a wake up left.  Pray for me.

The principal responded “yes” by the way.

The “Prep” Period

The bell rang.  “Alright everyone, we’ll pick up here on Monday.  Be safe this weekend.”

“Finally,” he exhaled, “I have a moment to prepare for the rest of the day.”

After one last glance making sure the hallway was clear, he closed the classroom door.  Inside, he sat alone.  He cleared his throat.

“Do your work,” he said.  But he wasn’t pleased.  He tried again.

“Do your work.”  He still thought something wasn’t right.

“Do your work.”  Eek!  Too much Batman.  He chuckled to himself before continuing.

“Do your work.”  Getting better, but still not perfect.

“Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.”  It was subtle, but he heard improvement.  Looking up at the clock, he saw his prep period was almost over.

“One last time,” he said to himself.

“Do your work.”  He smiled.  “Perfect!  And just in time.”

The bell rang.  Getting up to go stand outside his classroom door, relieved, he said to himself, “Okay, I’m ready for the students.”

Fear’s Heat

Waking up, he kept his eyes closed.  He was uncomfortable for sure.  Besides feeling like he was sleeping on uneven ground, he felt a disabling heat surround him.  It was a stifling heat.  He thought back to the last thing that he could remember.  He knew he was not alone.  He knew they had traveled to this place, their destination.  But where were they?  And where was she?  And why was it so hot?

Sweating, he could feel his pants clinging to his legs as if he had just climbed fully clothed from a hot spring.  A curiosity overtook his movements and he reached out with his hand blindly feeling for anything.  He felt something hot.  That’s all he knew for certain.  Suddenly he felt, not cool air itself, but the memory of cool air–the memory that cooler temperatures existed somewhere not too far from where he was.

Time taking effect, he began to remember where they were.  It was a campground.  They had setup their tent, and she wanted to take a rest.  He couldn’t believe his luck, and so they both crawled in the tent, sun blazing.  He remembered that before dozing off into a restful slumber he reassured himself that she couldn’t get into too much trouble within the confines of a tent, especially not a four-season, dual-door, dual-vestibule beaut like his.  Still, she did have a sleeping bag, a water bottle that emptied at a rate equivalent to a sippy cup, and Pingu, her pink penguin.

Finally, he heard her whispering.  It was unintelligible, so he made the decision to open his eyes and see she was up to.  Looking towards her whispers, he was immediately struck by a fear brought on by the inexplicable.  Her hair was soaked.  Her shorts just below her waistline were soaked.  In a moment, realizing she had not ‘rested’ but stayed up playing for who knows how long in a hot tent with no vents open, her sweaty hair made sense.  But why were her pants wet?  She was a potty trained three and a half year old.  Then he finally heard a full sentence as she guiltily turned, pouring water into her hand.

“Okay Pingu, we’re almost done with your shower.”