macy@hal.uucp (09/22/89)
One of the best telephone jokes I've ever heard. And like any
good telephone joke, it strikes a chord in all of us from the
industry. If you haven't worked with Special Services, you may
not appreciate it fully...
Did you hear about the Telephone Man who was drafted into the
Army? Seems he did well enough until he got out on the
rifle range. As the sergeant approaches, he notices the
Telephone man has his M-16 on full automatic and is blazing
away firing rounds at a phenomenal rate. There's a rapidly
growing pile of spent cartridges on the ground next to him.
The Sergeant lifts his field glasses to observe the accuracy
of this over confident trainee, and sees absolutely no marks
on the target. Now, Sergeants are painstakingly trained by
Uncle Sam to build the confidence and ability of all boot
camp soldiers, so the Sergeant sizes up the situation and
acts:
"Soldier, you've wasted hundreds of perfectly good rounds
of ammuntion and a thousand dollars of the taxpayer's good
money and you haven't hit the target once! What in the
[several arcane military terms deleted] is wrong here?"
Now the Telephone Man knows he must immediately analyse the
situation and correct the problem. His years of technical
training from Ma Bell are called into play:
The Telephone Man looks down the barrel of the gun.
Then he carefully inspects the chamber. (Probably looking
for the KS number so he can refer to the correct BSP for
this weapon, no doubt.) He then rams a cartridge home into
the chambers, arms the weapon, puts his finger over the
end of the barrel and pulls the trigger. Of course, this
neatly blows off the tip of his finger.
The Telephone Man inspects the end of his finger, and thinks
for a moment... "Well, gee, Sarge, I don't rightly know what
the problem is...but it must be at the other end, 'cause its
leaving here just fine!"
Macy Hallock fmsystm!macy@NCoast.ORG
F M Systems, Inc. hal!ncoast!fmsystm!macy
150 Highland Dr. uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!fmsystm!macy
Medina, OH 44256 Voice: 216-723-3000 X251