Hi Everyone!
Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!
They
(whoever "They" are!) named a day after
YOU.
In honor of all Moms, I decided to spend a
while this morning putting
together a Short Break. I want to make sure each Mom on my mail list gets a warm
greeting, and a laugh today.
Short Breaks have been rather sporadic lately, and I apologize. I have
been redirecting my life, and I'll share that with you at a later date.
For now, please enjoy Short Break, and have a warm and wonderful day!
Pam Faucher
(Say "FoShay")
1. Private Lessons
2. Eleven Tips On Getting More Efficiency Out Of Women Employees
3. We've Come A Long Way, Baby!
4. Tech Support
For Christmas this year my wife purchased me a week of
private lessons
at the local health club. Though still in great shape from
when I was
on the varsity chess team in high school, I decided
it was a good
idea to go ahead and try it. I called and made
reservations with
someone named Tanya, who said she is a 26-year-old
aerobics instructor
and athletic clothing model. My wife seemed very pleased
with how
enthusiastic I was to get started.
Day 1.
They suggest I keep this "exercise diary" to
chart my progress this
week. Started the morning at 6:00 AM. Tough to get
up, but worth it
when I arrived at the health club, and Tanya was waiting
for me. She's
something of a goddess, with blond hair and a dazzling
white smile.
She showed me the machines and took my pulse after five
minutes on the
treadmill. She seemed a little alarmed that it was so
high, but I
think just standing next to her in that outfit of hers
added about ten
points. Enjoyed watching the aerobics class. Tanya
was very
encouraging as I did my sit ups, though my gut was already
aching a
little from holding it in the whole time I was talking to
her. This is
going to be GREAT.
Day 2.
Took a whole pot of coffee to get me out the door, but I
made it.
Tanya had me lie on my back and push this heavy iron bar
up into the
air. Then she put weights on it, for heaven's
sake. Legs were a
little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made it the full
mile. Her smile
made it all worth it. Muscles feel GREAT.
Day 3.
The only way I can brush my teeth is by laying the tooth
brush on the
counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it. I am
certain that
I have developed a hernia in both pectorals. Driving was
okay as long
as I didn't try to steer. I parked on top of a Volkswagen.
Tanya was a
little impatient with me and said my screaming was
bothering the other
club members. The treadmill hurt my chest so I did the
stair monster.
Why would anyone invent a machine to simulate an activity
rendered
obsolete by the invention of elevators? Tanya told me
regular exercise
would make me live longer. I can't imagine anything worse.
Day 4.
Tanya was waiting for me with her vampire teeth in a full
snarl. I
can't help it if I was half an hour late, it took me that
long just to
tie my shoes. She wanted me to lift dumbbells. Not a
chance, Tanya.
The word "dumb" must be in there for a reason. I
hid in the men's room
until she sent Lars looking for me. As punishment, she
made me try the
rowing machine. It sank.
Day 5.
I hate Tanya more than any human being has ever hated any
other human
being in the history of the world. If there was any part
of my body
not in extreme pain I would hit her with it. She thought
it would be a
good idea to work on my triceps. Well, I have news for you
Tanya, I
don't have triceps. And if you don't want dents in the
floor don't
hand me any barbells. I refuse to accept responsibility
for the
damage, YOU went to sadist school, YOU are to blame.
The treadmill
flung me back into a science teacher, which hurt like
crazy. Why
couldn't it have been someone softer, like a music
teacher, or social
studies?
Day 6.
Got Tanya's message on my answering machine, wondering
where I am. I
lacked the strength to use the TV remote so I watched
eleven straight
hours of the weather channel.
Day 7.
Well, that's the week. Thank G-d that's over. Maybe next
time my wife
will give me something a little more fun, like a free
upper-colon exam
or free teeth drilling at the dentist's.
********************
The following is an excerpt
from the July 1943 issue of Mass
Transportation. It was written for male supervisors
of women in the work
force during World War II
Eleven Tips on getting more efficiency out of women employees:
There's no longer any question whether transit
companies should hire women
for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and
manpower shortage has settled
that point. The important things now are to
select the most efficient
women available and how to use them to the best
advantage. Here are eleven
helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:
1) Pick young married women. They usually have
more of a sense of
responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less
likely to be
flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing
it, they still
have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with
the public
efficiently.
2) When you have to use older women, try to get ones
who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have
never
contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves
and are inclined to be
cantakerous and fussy. It's always well to impress
upon older women the
importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3) General experience indicates that "husky"
girls - those who are just a
little on the heavyside - are more even tempered and
efficient than their
underweight sisters.
4) Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a
special physical
examination - one covering female conditions. This
step not only protects
the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but
reveals whether the
employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make
her mentally or
physically unfit for the job.
5) Stress at the outset the importance of time - the
fact that a minute or
two lost here and there makes serious inroads on
schedules. Until this
point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6) Give the female employee a definite daylong schedule
of duties so that
they'll keep busy without bothering the management for
instructions every
few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make
excellent workers
when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they
lack initiative in
finding work themselves.
7) Whenever possible, let the inside employee change
from one job to
another at some time during the day. Women are
inclined to be less nervous
and happier with change.
8) Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods
during the day. You
have to make some allowances for feminine
psychology. A girl has more
confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair
tidy, apply
fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9) Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making
critisisms. Women are
often sensitive, they can't shrug off harsh words the way
men do. Never
ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her
efficiency.
10) Be reasonably considerate about using strong
language around women.
Even though a girl's husband or father may swear
vociferously, she'll grow
to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of
this.
11) Get enough size variety in operators uniforms so
that each girl can
have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too
strongly as a means of
keeping women happy, according to Western Properties.
An elderly lady did her shopping and upon return found
4 males in her car.
She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun,
proceeding to scream at
them at the top of her voice that she knows how to use it
and that she will
if required.... so get out of the car.
The 4 men didn't wait around for a second invitation
but got out and ran
like mad, where upon the lady proceeded to load her
shopping bags into the
back of the car and got into the drivers seat. Small
problem, her key
wouldn't fit the ignition. Her car was identical and
parked four or five
spaces further down. She loaded her bags into her
car and drove to the
police station. The sergeant that she told the story
to nearly tore
himself in two with laughter and pointed to the other end
of the counter
where 4 pale white males were reporting a car-jacking by a
mad, elderly,
white woman......no charges were filed.
******************************
Subject: Tech
Support
People who need to return their computers, NOW!
Technical Geniuses
Customer: "Your sound card is defective and I want a new one."
Tech Support: What seems to be the problem?"
Customer: "The balance is backwards. The
left channel is coming out of
the right speaker and the right channel is coming out the
left. It's
defective."
Tech Support: "You can solve the problem by
moving the left speaker to
the right side of the machine and vice versa."
Customer: (sputter) (click)
Tech Support: (snicker)
*****
Customer: "I'd like to return this scanner."
Store Clerk: "Excuse me?"
Customer: "This scanner I bought. I paid
eighty dollars for this scanner,
and it doesn't work!"
Store Clerk: "Uh . . . sir, that's a trackball."
Customer: "No, it isn't. It says 600 dpi tracking resolution right here!"
*****
Got a call from a woman said that her laser
printer was having problems:
the bottom half of her printed sheets were coming out
blurry.
It seemed strange that the printer was smearing
only the bottom half. I
walked her through the basics, then came over and printed
out a test sheet.
It printed fine. I asked her to print a sheet, so
she sent a job to the
printer.
As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and showed it to me.
I told her to WAIT until the paper came out on its own.
*****
I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's
DeskJet division for
about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I
just couldn't
solve.
She could not print yellow. All the other colors
would print fine, which
truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan,
magenta, and
yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and
yellow, but green
printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine
except for yellow.
I had the customer change ink cartridges.
I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked.
I asked my co-workers for help; they offered no
new ideas. After over two
hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer
to send the
printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly,
"Should I try printing
on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow
construction paper?"
*****
A man attempting to set up his new printer
called the printer's tech
support number, complaining about the error message:
"Can't find the printer."
On the phone, the man said he even held the
printer up in front of the
screen, but the computer still couldn't find it!
*******
Customer: "Hello? I'm trying to dial in. I
installed the software okay,
and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear
the two computers
connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I picked up
the phone to
see if they were still connected, and I got the message,
'No Carrier,' on
my screen. What's wrong?"
*****
An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for
help with a Windows
installation that had gone terribly wrong.
Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from
work to install them on my
home computer." (Training stresses that we are
"not the Soft-ware Police,"
so I let the little act of piracy slide.)
Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't initialized."
Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"
Customer:(proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This
is not a Macintosh disk. Would
you like to initialize it'?"
Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
Customer: "After they were initialized all
the disks appeared to be
blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I
can't read them in the
A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our
only set of Windows
disks for the whole office. Did I do something
wrong?"
*****
For a computer programming class, I sat directly
across from someone, and
our computers were facing away from each other. A few
minutes into the
class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our
computers and
switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and
started typing and
immediately got a distressed look on her face.
She called the teacher over and explained that
no matter what she typed,
nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By
this time I was
hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.
I started to type, "Leave me alone!"
They both jumped back, silenced.
"What the . . . " the teacher said.
I typed, "I said leave me alone!"
The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I swear!"
It was all I could do to keep from laughing out
loud. The conversation
between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five
minutes.
Me: "Don't touch me!"
Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that hard."
Me: "Who do you think you are
anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I couldn't contain
myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing. After
they had
realized what I had done, they both turned beet red.
Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.
*****
I have a friend who just bought a computer and
was instructed to load a
program by typing "A:" and then the name of the
program. My friend told me
it would not work because his keyboard was no good. He
said he couldn't
type the "dot over dot thingie" and that every
time he tried to type the
"dot over dot thingie" he kept getting the
"dot over comma thingie" no
matter how careful he was to press only on the very top of
the key. When I
taught him about the shift key, he thought I was a genius.
******
This guy calls in to complain that he gets an
"Access Denied" message
every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his
user name and
password in capital letters.
Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."
*****
Email from a friend:
"CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"
****
My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet
afternoon. He noticed a
young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations
with her arms
crossed across her chest and staring at the screen.
After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was
still in the same position
only now she was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if
she needed help
and she replied, "It's about time! I pushed the F1
button over twenty
minutes ago!
*****************
Hope you've enjoyed your Break!
Pam!
