COMIC RELIEF
A man is skydiving, enjoying his free-fall, when he realizes that he has reached the altitude where he must open his parachute. So he pulls on the rip cord, but nothing happens.
“No problem,” he says to himself, “I still have my emergency chute.” So he pulls the rip cord on his emergency parachute, and once again, nothing happens.
Now the man begins to panic. “What am I going to do?” he thinks, “I’m a goner!”
Just then he sees a man flying up from the earth toward him. He can’t figure out where this man is coming from, or what he’s doing, but he thinks to himself, “Maybe he can help me. If he can’t, then I’m done for.”
When the man gets close enough to him, the skydiver cups his hands and shouts down, “Hey, do you know anything about parachutes?”
The other man replies, “No! Do you know anything about gas stoves?”
The balloonist
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost.
She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am..”
The man below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an Engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the man, “how did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you have told me is probably technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip by your talk.”
The man below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”