***THE OFFICIAL FRIDAY SILLINESS THREAD***

[Lucky9teen]

National Goof Off Day

When : Always March 22nd

Now here's a day that just about everybody can relax and enjoy. It's a day to do anything and everything.....except what you're supposed to do today.

Assuming you won't get in trouble at work or school, go ahead and play some golf, or play video games all day. Spend extra time surfing the net. Go out and spend the day window shopping with your favorite friend. Or, just read sit down and read a book or watch TV. This day is set aside for you to do anything you enjoy doing.

A few years ago, a survey was performed to identify the most popular activity for goofing off. The top activity was playing video games. Who conducted the survey? Nintendo.......no surprise. It kinda makes you wonder just who might have had the brainstorm to create this day......hmmmm. 

A business owner decides to take a tour around his business and see how things are going. He goes down to the shipping docks and sees a young man leaning against the wall doing nothing.

The owner walks up to the young man and says, "Son, how much do you make a day?"

The guy replies, "150 dollars."

The owner pulls out his wallet, gives him $150, and tells him to get out and never come back.

A few minutes later, the shipping clerk asks the owner, "Have you seen that UPS driver?? I asked him to wait here for me!"

Corporate Terminology

COMPETITIVE SALARY: We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.

JOIN OUR FAST-PACED COMPANY: We have no time to train you.

CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE: We don't pay you enough to expect that you'll dress nicely.

MUST BE DEADLINE ORIENTED: You'll be six months behind schedule on your first day.

MUST BE FLEXIBLE: On many occasions, you'll be asked to bend over and grab your ankles.

SOME OVERTIME REQUIRED: Some time each night and some time each weekend.

DUTIES WILL VARY: Anyone in the office can boss you around.

MUST HAVE AN EYE FOR DETAIL: We have no quality control.

CAREER-MINDED: Female employees must be childless (and remain that way).

APPLY IN PERSON: If you're old, fat or ugly you'll be told the position has been filled.

NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE: We've filled the job; our call for resumes is just a legal formality.

SEEKING CANDIDATES WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE: You'll need it to replace the three people who just left.

PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS A MUST: You're walking into a company in perpetual chaos.

REQUIRES TEAM LEADERSHIP SKILLS: You'll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect.

GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS: Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do it.

How to Succeed in Business

Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands. People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they're heading for the cafeteria.

People with the newspaper in their hands look like they're heading for the bathroom. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you do.

* * *

Use computers to look busy. Any time you use a computer, it looks like work to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail, calculate your finances and generally have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work.

These aren't exactly the societal benefits that everybody from the computer revolution expected but they're not bad either. When you get caught by your boss--and you will get caught--your best defense is to claim you're teaching yourself to use the new software, thus saving valuable training dollars.

You're not a loafer, you're a self-starter. Offer to show your boss what you learned. That will make your boss scurry away like a frightened salamander.

* * *

Messy desk. Top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like you're not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace.

To the observer, last year's work looks the same as today's work; it's volume that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you'll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.

* * *

Voice mail. Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don't call you just because they want to give you something for nothing-- they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's the way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail.

If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour. That way, you're hardworking and conscientious even though you're being a devious weasel. If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that they will give up or look for a solution that doesn't involve you.

The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is "Ignore my last message. I took care of it." If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages.

Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this mailbox is full"--a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.

[The Chief]

Why we shoot deer in the wild:
(A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this)

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up— 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer— no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ..... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head—almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp... I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -like a horse —strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope......to sort of even the odds!!

All these events are true so help me God...An Educated Farmer

[OrioleFan]

On my first programming job back in 1972, a VP’s secretary told me, “If you’re going to be late for work, be at least 1 hour late. No one will question it, because they will think you were at the doctor or dentist office.”

[ErnBatavia]

May he rest in peace....not!

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

[moose07]

LOl, that's my kind of Dawg!