Friday Funnies

As always, when it's time to wind down the week after some prospecting, it's best to do it with humor.  Enjoy!

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A management consultant with a passion for hot-air ballooning finds himself blown off course and drifting helplessly over the countryside.  Spotting a bird watcher below, he calls down, "Excuse me, can you please tell me where I am?"

The bird watcher adjusts his binoculars, looks up at the man, and says, "Well, it looks to me like you're in a hot air balloon, fifty feet up, and drifting west."

The management consultant frowns.  "You must be an engineer," he tells the man.

"As a matter of fact, I am," the man replies.  "How did you know?"

"Because you gave me a lot of information that's technically correct but which really doesn't help me any."

The birdwatcher/engineer smiled.  "You must be a manager," he tells the balloonist.

"Yes, I am," says the man.  "How did you know?"

"Well," says the bird watcher.  "You need my help, I've told you everything I know, I'm doing my best to help you, and you're still not satisfied; but now it's somehow MY FAULT."

***

A lazy sparrow put off flying south for the winter until it was nearly too late.  Finally taking to the air, he quickly flew into an ice storm.  Gradually, the ice began to coat his wings, and the sparrow found he was too heavy to continue flying and fell to earth.  To make matters worse, shortly after he landed a cow passed by and decided to poop all over the sparrow as he lay in the field.

"Great," said the sparrow.  "This is just perfect."

However, the warm manure quickly began to melt the ice on the sparrow's wings.  In a short time, he found he could flap them again, and he felt so good that he began to sing.  Unfortunately, the singing attracted a nearby cat, who followed the sound, cleared away the poo, and quickly ate the little sparrow.

Morals:
1.  Not everyone who dumps on you is your enemy.
2.  Not everyone who gets you out of a stinky situation is your friend.
3.  And if you're warm and happy in a dung heap, think twice before opening your mouth. 

***

A mafioso hired a deaf mute as his bookkeeper, thinking his money would be safe since the man never talked.  He was happy with the man's service until he double-checked the books one day and found he was $2 million short.  Furious, he had his goons bring the bookkeeper in for questioning along with his brother to translate. 

"You tell dis guy I wanna know where my two million bucks is at," the mafioso growled.

The brother turned to the bookkeeper and quickly translated the gangster's demand.  The bookkeeper looked astonished, and he quickly signed back, "I have no idea."  The brother turned to the mafioso.  "He said he doesn't know," the brother replied.

The gangster pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and put it against the bookkeeper's temple.  "You tell dis guy I wanna know where my two million bucks is at," he said.  "And if he don't tell me, I'm gonna blow his brains out right here after I have da boys work him over, see?  Now tell him." 

The brother signed the threat to the bookkeeper, who quickly and frantically replied in sign language, "I'm sorry!  It's in my closet at home in two suitcases!  A thousand pardons - I promise, it will never happen again!"

The brother looked at the bookkeeper and signed back, "Just to make sure, you say it's in the closet, right?  In the suitcases?"

The bookkeeper signed back, "Yes!  It's all there!  Just tell him!"

"What'd he say?" the mafioso asked, thumbing back the hammer on his pistol.

The brother looked back at him, "He says you're not man enough to pull the trigger!"

Pre-Friday Funny: The Job

This made the rounds last year but was worth sharing again for those who may not have seen it.  Suffice it to say it's a lot like "Dilbert" in the sense that you're not sure whether to laugh or cry because, well, the truth is sometimes as painful as it is funny...

The Job.

What I Learned from Classic TV: Star Trek

After drawing life lessons from classic cinema (Animal House, Blues Brothers, Blazing Saddles), I thought I'd give classic TV a shot.  (What can I say, the requests keep coming...)  To that end, we devote today's entry to discussing what the crew of the starship Enterprise taught us about the workplace of the future.  Enjoy!

***

In the future, everybody will speak English.  Yes, this applies not only to all the nationalities here on Earth but also to distant alien races on the far side of the galaxy.  Didn't know that, did you?  (Side note:  On a related tangent, I always wondered why Charlie Heston couldn't figure out he was back on Earth in the original "Planet of the Apes" movie.  You'd think the fact that the gorillas and chimps both spoke perfect English might have given him some clue long before that famous Statue of Liberty shot at the end...)

In the future, your coworkers will be reliable and trustworthy.  I think it was Scott Adams of "Dilbert" fame who pointed out - correctly, I think - that people in the future will have to be much more worthy of your trust than your current coworkers for the following reason:  These people will be responsible for sending your molecules across time and space and reassembling them in their original form via the transporter.  Bear in mind, these are the same people who can't be relied on to refill the copy machine when it runs out of paper, wash out the coffee urn, or complete the simple parts of an assigned project.  Yet in the future, you will be able to literally trust them with your very life.  Amazing!

Never, under ANY circumstances, go to a job interview in a red shirt.  And if, God forbid, you actually make this critical mistake, never let your boss refer to you simply by your last name ("Johnson" or "Williams").  If you do, then it's all but guaranteed that when the malevolent alien life form arrives, you're going to be the first casualty.  Call it "Rule of the Cast Regulars," which you can usually find under "Ratings Preservation" in your textbook...

Diversity will be the norm, but some things may not change that much.  Face it, whatever else you might want to say about Gene Rodenberry, the man WAS a visionary.  The crew of the Enterprise was the most diverse of its time - in fact, you had more minorities on the starship bridge than you did on the cast of Friends or Seinfeld thirty years later.  In the future, diversity won't be official policy because it will simply be natural.  That said, however, white males will apparently still occupy the captain's seat...

In the future, things will keep changing even if they worked fine the first go-round.  Ever look at the Klingons in the original show?  Then see Worf on "Next Generation" or any of the movies and wonder, "Hey, since when did the Klingons get those wild craniums?"  Apparently, makeup artists just couldn't leave well enough alone, so the space bikers of the future got a makeover sometime between the show and the sequels.  Much like you were probably happier with XP before Vista, expect things to change for nothing but the sake of change, even in the future.

And on a deeply personal note -

In the future, you will need to guard copyright much more closely.  Why?  Well, back in the early days of the Internet, a friend sent me the now-famous list of "100 Reasons Why Captain Kirk is Better Than Captain Picard."  Being a bit more of a Picard fan than Shatner fan, I laughed, went home, and typed up a similar list entitled, "101 Reasons Captain Picard is Better Than Captain Kirk."  (Ed. note:  Why, yes, I was single at the time.  Why do you ask?)  I sent it back to him, and suffice it to say that more than a decade later, both lists are now all over the Internet.  If I'd only thought to copyright it first, I might not need to be job searching now...

Can You RAP Like a STAR?

Attend almost any networking event, and you'll sooner or later hear the same strategy when it comes to answering interview questions.  "You need to follow the STAR method:  Situation - Task - Action - Result."  Others use the SAR method, which is the same without the "Task" action.  Still others use "PAR" for "Problem - Action - Result." 

But whatever it's called, each method aims to accomplish the same objective:  To use a structured format for relating an experience that outlines how you addressed and solved a particular problem.

Recently, however, this approach has been turned upside down, and prospective job seekers are now expected to learn how to RAP. 

You read that right; but it's not what you think.  Prospective employers - the ones that are actually looking to hire as opposed to some of the others we've examined on this blog - have now seen and heard so many formulaic stories along the traditional S-T-A-R / S-A-R / P-A-R format that to distinguish yourself, you need to invert the process. 

In other words, rather than follow the standard 1-2-3 process, some recruiters and job placement experts are recommending you "flip" the P-A-R process and instead use R-A-P:  Tell them the RESULT, then tell them the ACTION that you took, and then indicate the PROBLEM that it solved.  In a time-conscious society, this helps you get right to the result and then provide the necessary background to explain.  It also helps you catch the interviewer's attention more quickly.

A brief illustration might help clarify.  Here's the traditional approach:

Interviewer:  "Tell me about a problem you faced and how you overcame it."

Candidate:  "We had a problem at my last job with controlling our costs.  Basically, we were losing money.  I formed a project team to evaluate every stage of our supply chain process and identify areas of redundancy or where we were spending more than we needed.  After that, I compiled the recommendations into a single plan for our senior management and submitted the proposal.  As a result, we saved nearly $100,000 in just three months by eliminating wasteful and unnecessary practices." 

Now the RAP approach:

Interviewer:  "Tell me a little about yourself."

Candidate:  "Let me tell you how I saved my last company $100,000.  I felt we were spending more than we needed to in several areas, so I formed a project team to examine our supply chain process and identify redundant or unnecessary areas.  As a result, we not only saved a good deal of money, but I helped eliminate a lot of waste that was clogging our operational efforts."

In this newer method, you lead with your best shot to capture the interviewer's attention, and then expand on your answer to provide the necessary detail.  As a result, you've not only followed the traditional 3-stage process for answering the question, but you've done so in a way that highlights your skills and abilities to achieve results. 

And if/when you're successful in landing that job someday?  You'll have something to tell your friends at the next cocktail party when they ask you how you did it. 

"I learned how to RAP."

The New 99

Remember "Get Smart" in the '60s?  Me neither, since I grew up with it on reruns; but I remember watching Don Adams and Barbara Feldon fight the nefarious agents of KAOS in half-hour installments of slapstick hilarity every afternoon.  And Hollywood, always happy to recycle old ideas for the sake of both nostalgia and the DVD rental market brought it back recently with Steve Carrell as the buffoonish Smart and Anne Hathaway (see photo) as the long-legged Agent 99.

But apparently there is now another meaning of that double-niner identity.

According to no less a source than 60 Minutes, the term "ninety-niners" now refers to the increasing numbers of people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits but who have still not been able to find work.  Even more surprising, many of them not only have college degrees, they often have masters and PhDs as well.  Some highlights (lowlights?) of the most recent episode which featured discussions with many LTUs (long-term unemployed) include:

• At least 1.5 million Americans have exhausted their unemployment benefits but still can't find jobs
• Twenty percent of the unemployed have at least one college degree
• Unemployment is officially 9.7% at this time; however, if people whose jobs have been cut back to part-time are included along with those who have simply given up the job search completely, the number is actually 17%
• Some food banks are seeing requests for assistance reach levels that are eight times what they were a decade ago

Taken together, these numbers point to a grim picture that will probably not be brightening all that much in the near future.  What's most frustrating is the fact that most of these people have probably been pounding the pavement nonstop since they were let go but have now fallen - through no fault of their own - into the designation of being long-term unemployed, a term that rightly or wrongly carries a certain stigma.  ("There must be something wrong with him or her if they've been out of work this long.  Probably too proud to take a lower-paying job or maybe has some kind of personality issue.")  In other words, simply being out of work for an extended period impedes one's ability to find and land a job.  And the longer one is unemployed...

To view the 60 Minutes piece, click here.  But keep the Kleenex handy.



Long Term Unemployment Leads to Global Warming!

It's official:  Unemployment leads to climate change. 

How do I know this?  Because I have undeniable proof.  In fact, it came to me completely unsolicited with last Friday's mail. 

A number of months ago, I applied to two organizations - one was a college, the other a professional society.  Although neither led to my landing a job, my application apparently DID get me on - wait for it - their respective mailing lists!  Since I never had any contact with either organization prior to my applications, I can only conclude that both envelopes - which naturally contained the obligatory marketing collateral - came to me because of my application for employment.

In other words, simply by applying for work, I somehow wound up on these organizations' mailing lists and am now being targeted by their marketing departments. 

Now, here's where it gets frightening.  Over the past year, I've probably applied to well over four or five hundred different organizations.  (Note:  This is an estimation, not a scientific qualification.  Suffice it to say no matter how many that actual number really is, it feels like far more.)  Now, assuming only 10% of those companies follow this same practice and put me on their mailing lists, I can expect between 40 and 50 more promotional mailings to begin clogging my mailbox over the next year or so.  What this spells out can probably be best summarized with the following proof:

1.  Applying to jobs gets you put on more promotional mailing lists.
2.  More mailing lists mean more junk mail
3.  Junk mail consumes paper (envelopes, brochures, correspondence, etc.)
4.  Paper comes from trees.
5.  Trees combat climate change by consuming carbon dioxide
6.  More mail = more paper = more trees = more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
7.  More carbon dioxide = more greenhouse gases = global warming

Cutting out steps 2-6 and you get the following:

Applying for jobs = global warming

So, leaving aside the sinister possibility that some organizations simply advertise positions not because they seek to hire but simply because they find it an inexpensive way to expand their outreach lists, this means that as long as corporations refuse to hire qualified workers, they are indirectly contributing to climate change. 

Think about that for your next interview.

Friday Funnies

Well, it's Friday once again; and while we normally post jokes, puns, and the occasional work-related humor, once in a while the well runs dry.  When that happens, we improvise.  And if this video clip doesn't bring a smile to your face, seek help. 

Enjoy!