In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
I worked on my manager’s computer a while back. While waiting for an operation to complete, I was idly spinning the cursor around the screen, as many do. My manager asked why techs often seem to do that.
“Oh,” I said, “sometimes you have to spin the mouse around in a clockwise direction to wind it up. You don’t have to do it very often, but we usually do it while we’re working on other things to save time.”
The manager swallowed the story, and my co-workers and I had a good chuckle about it later.
A few days later, another of our guys was working on the same machine. The manager caught him moving the cursor around while he was waiting on the computer to finish something.
“Why are you spinning the cursor counterclockwise?” the manager asked.
Without missing a beat, he replied, “Every so often, they get wound up too tight, and you have to unwind them.”
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
I was interning at a local ISP and every once in a while got to take a tech support call. I probably only took about five at the most. Here’s the best one.
Tech Support: “Tech support.”
Customer: “Yeah, every time I get on the Internet and leave my computer, I get disconnected.”
Tech Support: “How long are you away from your computer?”
Customer: “About 10-20 minutes.”
Tech Support: “Sir, if you’re idle for more than 15 minutes, we disconnect you.”
Customer: “Well don’t disconnect me!”
Tech Support: “It’s not us, sir — it’s the servers, they do it automatically.”
Customer: “Change it, then.”
Tech Support: “I can’t.”
Customer: “Yes you can!”
Tech Support: “Sir, I’m not allowed to.”
Customer: “I pay for this service, and dammit, you’re going to change it!”
Tech Support: “Sir, I’m not allowed to change it. Bottom line.”
Customer: “And why not!?”
Tech Support: “Because I’m not the administrator.”
Customer: “Well tell him to change it!”
Tech Support: “I can’t do that either. The administrator hates me.”
Customer: “Why?”
Tech Support: “Because I won our last Nerf tournament.”
Customer: “Nerf tournament?! I pay you guys to play with toys?”
Tech Support: “We do it in our spare time.”
Customer: “I want to talk to your supervisor!”
Tech Support: “Sorry, but my supervisor is the administrator, and he’s busy.”
Customer: “Well, I’m going to rat you out about your little Nerf gun secret!”
Tech Support: “Tell the owner — it’ll give him more of a reason to come down here to play with us.”
He hung up.