Half a Grapefruit
There is a story about a new clerk in a supermarket. A customer asked him if she could buy half a grapefruit. Not knowing what to do, he excused himself to ask the manager.
“Some nut out there wants to buy half a grapefruit…”
he began, and, suddenly realizing that the customer had entered the office behind him, continued, “… and this lovely lady would like to buy the other half.”
The manager was impressed with the way the clerk amicably resolved the problem and they later started chatting. “Where are you from?” asked the store manager.
“Lancaster, Pennsylvania,” replied the clerk, “home of ugly women and great hockey teams.”
“Oh, my WIFE is from Lancaster,” challenged the manager.
Without skipping a beat, the clerk asked, “What team was she on?”
Ice
I pulled up to the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant and ordered coffee. I asked the clerk to put some ice cubes into the cup so that I could drink the cool coffee quickly.
At the window, there was a delay. Finally, a teen-aged girl came to the window looking frustrated. “I’m having a problem,” she announced. “The ice keeps melting.”
Albert Einstein
When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker’s circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another rubber-chicken dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur (a man who somewhat resembled Einstein in looks and manner) that he was tired of speech making.
“I have an idea, boss,” his chauffeur said. “I’ve heard you give this speech so many times. I’ll bet I could give it for you.”
Einstein laughed loudly and said, “Why not? Let’s do it!”
When they arrived at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur’s cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein’s speech and even answered a few questions expertly.
Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody’s fool.
Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, “Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me.”
