He’d rather be dead than have to do the team-building day.
Worst thing like this, which was characterized as “sales training” was when I worked in Singapore. We were informed that we would have training on the coming Saturday AND Sunday, all day. No pay, no time off in-lieu. Yes, I did leave when I found a better job. Working in that country tends to be like that. The companies largely think they own you.
I understood it as S.B. explained. But it doesn’t work for me.
Death’s job is to carry off your soul to the afterlife. Death doesn’t necessarily wish you ill or want to ruin anything for you or take you prematurely.
I think maybe the joke being that Death often scares people, and they don’t want to go with him. No one is happy to see Death at the door. Death must be used to that. However, as the guy has one of these insufferable training activities coming up next week, he’s more than happy to go with him. He’s reversed Death’s expectations. Pretty much like SB said.
My initial reaction was that he was somehow threatening that Death had to take the whole team, and not just him, but on second thought that just doesn’t seem plausible. I think SB & Stan have it.
P.S. I can’t share this guy’s aversion: my company offers an weekend team-building event every summer. It’s not just enjoyable, we also get extra vacation days in exchange.
I thought the guy believed that having a meeting scheduled meant he couldn’t die. And he would shortly discover his error.
Sorry, I can’t oblige you. The meeting is mandatory for all staff.
Not all team meetings are worse than death, as Kilby points out. The company that I currently work with runs one of about 5 days annually. Last one involved a very comfortable flight to London, a couple of days of work discussions and then a few days at a country resort and all with tons of good food and drink on their nickel. And no trust fall nonsense. Best job ever.
SB – You’re lucky. I pray for death whenever one of these events are announced. I have never learned anything useful, and just end up listening to tedious speakers who are not down in the trenches and have no idea what they’re taking about.
I have one coming up in March. C’mon death! Come on!
I saw this Fall Fail video some time ago, and wondered if it was staged.
I used to have to go to half-day inservices aimed at secretaries. As I wasn’t an office secretary, but a Library Assistant, there was NOTHING relevant to me except the breakfast snacks provided. I would take a book and read through the entire session.
As there were only eight Library Assistants in the district, we never had an inservice of our own to actually learn OUR computer system; we had on-the-job learning, without a teacher.
I once attended one where the motivational speaker was all about “Thinking outside the box”; she had a puzzle challenge we all had to do in groups, for which there was one — and only one — prescribed correct outside-of-the-box answer (aside from the obvious, and not quite complete, inside-the-box solution). When two groups came up with alternative solutions that were not the outside-of-the-box solution she had had in mind, but were complete solutions, they were firmly told that they had not solved the problem correctly! (This took place in Brazil, and is illustrative of exactly why Brazil never manages to become the promised land of the future.)
But it was a nice weekend at a quiet sort of resort in the country at the company’s expense, and I was able to bring my girlfriend, so aside from that 2 hour valuable life lesson, it was quite nice.
The surgeon is the kid’s *mother*!
I REALLY hope the Fall Fail video was staged, with something for him to safely fall onto.
Mitch: and if you answer that the kid had two gay dads, or that it was his priest with him in the car, you are WRONG! There’s thinking outside the box, and then there’s heresy!
When I first heard the “surgeon is the mother” puzzle more than half a century ago, it was a different world: my kids wouldn’t have understood why it WAS a puzzle.
I’m quite sure I remember it from the sixties. As Bill points out, there have been generations growing up without the assumptions that make it at all a puzzle.
So I was astounded just a couple days ago to read a fresh young article somewhere on Medium setting out and analyzing the puzzle. And so many commenters along the lines of “What an eye-opener!”.
Happily, I was not the first to respond that it goes back a long time and that we thought the lesson had been absorbed by society. (Also refreshing were those saying “mother” was the obvious answer and the puzzle must be to come up with something else again. The “two gay dads” answer was a fit there.)
larK – my problem is that my brain normally thinks “outside the box” with the result that I often don’t understand what people mean and they don’t understand what I mean. Robert and I have a code for this, I will ask him “is this a Meryl thing?” when I am confused when others talk or others are when I talk. (Apparently I think too concretely – no I don’t mean what they use for buildings and sidewalks.)
Comics I Don't Understand 
He’d rather be dead than have to do the team-building day.
Worst thing like this, which was characterized as “sales training” was when I worked in Singapore. We were informed that we would have training on the coming Saturday AND Sunday, all day. No pay, no time off in-lieu. Yes, I did leave when I found a better job. Working in that country tends to be like that. The companies largely think they own you.
I understood it as S.B. explained. But it doesn’t work for me.
Death’s job is to carry off your soul to the afterlife. Death doesn’t necessarily wish you ill or want to ruin anything for you or take you prematurely.
I think maybe the joke being that Death often scares people, and they don’t want to go with him. No one is happy to see Death at the door. Death must be used to that. However, as the guy has one of these insufferable training activities coming up next week, he’s more than happy to go with him. He’s reversed Death’s expectations. Pretty much like SB said.
My initial reaction was that he was somehow threatening that Death had to take the whole team, and not just him, but on second thought that just doesn’t seem plausible. I think SB & Stan have it.
P.S. I can’t share this guy’s aversion: my company offers an weekend team-building event every summer. It’s not just enjoyable, we also get extra vacation days in exchange.
I thought the guy believed that having a meeting scheduled meant he couldn’t die. And he would shortly discover his error.
Sorry, I can’t oblige you. The meeting is mandatory for all staff.
Not all team meetings are worse than death, as Kilby points out. The company that I currently work with runs one of about 5 days annually. Last one involved a very comfortable flight to London, a couple of days of work discussions and then a few days at a country resort and all with tons of good food and drink on their nickel. And no trust fall nonsense. Best job ever.
Trust fall: https://youtu.be/6Y4vbS6c4p4
SB – You’re lucky. I pray for death whenever one of these events are announced. I have never learned anything useful, and just end up listening to tedious speakers who are not down in the trenches and have no idea what they’re taking about.
I have one coming up in March. C’mon death! Come on!
I saw this Fall Fail video some time ago, and wondered if it was staged.
I used to have to go to half-day inservices aimed at secretaries. As I wasn’t an office secretary, but a Library Assistant, there was NOTHING relevant to me except the breakfast snacks provided. I would take a book and read through the entire session.
As there were only eight Library Assistants in the district, we never had an inservice of our own to actually learn OUR computer system; we had on-the-job learning, without a teacher.
I once attended one where the motivational speaker was all about “Thinking outside the box”; she had a puzzle challenge we all had to do in groups, for which there was one — and only one — prescribed correct outside-of-the-box answer (aside from the obvious, and not quite complete, inside-the-box solution). When two groups came up with alternative solutions that were not the outside-of-the-box solution she had had in mind, but were complete solutions, they were firmly told that they had not solved the problem correctly! (This took place in Brazil, and is illustrative of exactly why Brazil never manages to become the promised land of the future.)
But it was a nice weekend at a quiet sort of resort in the country at the company’s expense, and I was able to bring my girlfriend, so aside from that 2 hour valuable life lesson, it was quite nice.
The surgeon is the kid’s *mother*!
I REALLY hope the Fall Fail video was staged, with something for him to safely fall onto.
Mitch: and if you answer that the kid had two gay dads, or that it was his priest with him in the car, you are WRONG! There’s thinking outside the box, and then there’s heresy!
When I first heard the “surgeon is the mother” puzzle more than half a century ago, it was a different world: my kids wouldn’t have understood why it WAS a puzzle.
I’m quite sure I remember it from the sixties. As Bill points out, there have been generations growing up without the assumptions that make it at all a puzzle.
So I was astounded just a couple days ago to read a fresh young article somewhere on Medium setting out and analyzing the puzzle. And so many commenters along the lines of “What an eye-opener!”.
Happily, I was not the first to respond that it goes back a long time and that we thought the lesson had been absorbed by society. (Also refreshing were those saying “mother” was the obvious answer and the puzzle must be to come up with something else again. The “two gay dads” answer was a fit there.)
larK – my problem is that my brain normally thinks “outside the box” with the result that I often don’t understand what people mean and they don’t understand what I mean. Robert and I have a code for this, I will ask him “is this a Meryl thing?” when I am confused when others talk or others are when I talk. (Apparently I think too concretely – no I don’t mean what they use for buildings and sidewalks.)