How many applicants does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but 200 applied for the job.
Thirteen. One to change the bulb and a dozen others to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to apply for the job.
Work Experience
“Why are you so excited?”, the surgeon asked the patient that was about to be anesthetized.
“But doc, this is my first operation.”
“Really? It’s mine too, and I am not excited at all.”
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.”
Three men took a small plane to the wilderness in northern Canada to hunt moose over the weekend. The last thing the pilot said was, “Remember, this is a very small plane and you will only be able to bring ONE moose back.”
But of course, they killed one each and returned to the plane with three moose.
The pilot said: “I have told you to bring one moose only”.
“That’s what you told us last year,” the hunters replied, “but for an additional $100 you allowed us to bring three moose. Here, take $100 now.”
The pilot agrees, and lets them bring all three dead moose onboard.
Just after takeoff, the plane stalled and crashed. In the wreckage, one of the men woke up, looked around and said: “Where the hell are we?”
“Oh, just about a hundred yards east of the place where we crashed last year.”
A Manager of a retail clothing store is reviewing a potential employee’s application and notices that the man has never worked in retail before. He says to the man, “For a man with no experience, you are certainly asking for a high wage.”
“Well Sir,” the applicant replies, “the work is so much harder when you don’t know what you’re doing!”
The classified ad said, “Wanted: a very experienced lumberjack”. A man answered the ad and was asked to describe his experience.
“I’ve worked at the Sahara Forest.”
“You mean the Sahara Desert,” said the interviewer.
The man laughed and answered, “Oh sure, that’s what they call it now!”
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
Experience is something you do not get until just after you need it.
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
Experience is knowledge acquired when it’s too late.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Hunting an Elephant
Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left.
Experienced mathematicians will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.
Computer programmers hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
- Go to Africa.
- Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
- Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west.
- During each traverse pass,
a. Catch each animal seen.
b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
c. Stop when a match is detected.
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.
Economists don’t hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough, they will hunt themselves.
Experienced economists never saw an elephant, but they try to hunt one by controlling the interest rates.
Statisticians hunt the first gray animal they see N times and call it an elephant.
Experienced statisticians add that there is a small probability that the animal they hunted is a mouse.
Lawyers can let hunting a single elephant drag out for several years.
Experienced lawyers can make it last even longer.
Consultants don’t hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.
Experienced consultants can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants.
Politicians don’t hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them.
Experienced politicians take the elephant for themselves and blame the press.
Managers set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices.
Experienced managers keep in the project file the advise that claims that elephants are just like field mice.
Sales people don’t hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven’t caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.
Experienced sales people ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant.
Computer sales people catch gray animals at random, and sell any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant.
Experienced computer sales people catch gray rabbits, and sell them as desktop elephants.