---

---

Government Work - The Lighter Side
April 17, 2001

Federal Work A Federal Government Employee sits in his office and out of boredom, decides to see what's in his old filing cabinet. He pokes through the contents and comes across an old brass lamp. "This would look nice on my mantelpiece," he thinks, so he takes it home with him. While polishing the lamp, a genie appears and grants him three wishes. "I wish for an ice cold diet Pepsi right now!" POOF! A Pepsi appears before him on his desk, so he picks it up and guzzles it all at once. Now that he can think more clearly, he states his second wish. "I wish to be on an island where beautiful women reside." POOF! Suddenly he is on an island with gorgeous females eyeing him up and down. He then tells the genie his third and last wish: "I wish I'd never have to work ever again." POOF! He's back in his government office. State Work During a terrible snowstorm one winter, many of the highway signs were totally covered with snow. The following spring, the state decide to raise all the signs twelve inches. At a cost of six million dollars, each sign was equipped with a new pole, one foot longer than the old pole. "That's an outrageous price," said a local farmer, "but I guess we're lucky the state government handled it, instead of the federal government." "Why's that?" his neighbor asked. "Because," the farmer answered, "knowin' the federal government, they'd have decided to lower all the highways." County Work A fellow stopped at a rural gas station, filled his tank, and took a break by his car while drinking a soda. As he relaxed, he watch a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him by about 25 feet and filled in the hole. The men worked right past the fellow with the soft drink and went on down the road. Overcome by curiosity, the fellow headed for the first man. "Hey there," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?" "We work for the county government, " one of the men said. "But one of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. Isn't that a waste of the county's money?" "Well," one of the men replied, "normally there's three of us - me, Rodney, and Mike. I dig the hole, Rodney sticks in the tree, and Mike here puts the dirt back." "Yeah," Mike added. "Just because Rodney's sick, that don't mean we can't work, does it?"