Jokes in your profession

In My Humble Opinion
1

Defence lawyers make fun of prosecutors, nurses make fun of doctors, structual engineers make fun of electrical engineers…tell your favourite professional in-joke here.

I’ve got a couple of medical ones:

Q: What is a double-blind trial?
A: Two orthopaedic surgeons trying to read an ECG.

Emergency department motto: “The thickest treating the sickest”

Q:How do you know you’ve met a cardio-thoracic surgeon?
A: Don’t worry, he’ll tell you.

Orthopaedic surgeons: the brawn of an ox and the brains to match.

2

Physicists love making fun of engineers and mathematicians. Here’s one of my favorites:

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are all staying in adjacent hotel rooms when a fire breaks out in each of their rooms during the night. The engineer wakes up and sees the fire. He runs into the bathroom, turns on both faucets full blast, puts out the fire by flooding the room, and goes back to bed. The physicist wakes up and sees the fire. Using the pencil and pad of paper on the nightstand, he quickly does some estimated calculations, grabs his trusty graduated cylinder, measures out a precise amount of water, and puts out the fire, not a drop wasted. He goes back to bed. The mathematician wakes up and sees the fire. He runs over to the desk and starts scribbling out proofs like mad. Lemmas, corollaries, in depth analyses, page after page. Finally he slams down his pencil, announces, “I have proven that I CAN put out the fire!” and goes back to bed.

3

One janitor, ribbing another, calls him “Colonel of the Urinal.”

A janitor’s favorite Olympic event is Curling. It’s the only sport where a guy with a broom can be a hero.

4

A lot of Earth science jokes are puns (you’re full of schist; meet me behind the outcrop, baby, I’m a little boulder there; etc.). Here’s the only one I know that pokes fun at fellow Earth scientists.

The university’s geological sciences department decides to add a hydrogeologist to the faculty. They call in a likely candidate to interview with the three faculty members most likely to become close colleagues - a geochemist, a geologist, and a geophysicist.

First the applicant meets with the geochemist. They have a nice chat, and then the geochemist says, “So, do you have any questions for me?”

The applicant says, “Yes. Can you tell me please, what’s 2 + 2?”

The geochemist replies, “Well, of course it will depend on instrument calibration and measurement error, but I’d say 2 + 2 = 4.0000 +/- 0.00000000…”

Next the applicant meets with the geologist. They have a nice chat, and then the geologist asks, “So, do you have any questions?”

The applicant says, “Yes. Can you tell me please, what’s 2 + 2?”

The geologist thinks for a moment, and then says, “Hmm, I’ll say it’s somewhere between 3 and 5.”

Finally the applicant meets with the geophysicist. They have a nice chat, and then the geophysicist asks if the applicant has any more questions.

The applicant says, “Yes. Can you tell me please, what’s 2 + 2?”

The geophysicist leans across his desk, winks and whispers, “What would you like it to be?”

5

I spent a number of years as a technical writer, and here are two I recall from being in that field:

Is a technical writer regarded as a professional? No, just as a manual laborer.

How do you know that tech writing students aren’t very bright? Because they’re twits. (This one is a real inside joke–TWIT is how we used to refer to Technical Writers In Training.)

6

This is quite like the most common accountant joke. I won’t bother to rephrase it.

7

They’re not quite jokes, but some of the profs in my English Dept. are fond of referring to NCLB as “More Children Left Behind” or “More Children Kicked in the Behind.”

8

An architect, an artist, and a physicist are having a discussion about whether it’s better to have a wife or a mistress.

The architect says: “You need a wife: a strong foundation is the most fundamental part of a relationship.”

The artist opines “No, you need a mistress, because life requires passion and excitment and unpredictability.”

And the physicist says: “No, you need BOTH a wife AND a mistress; that way each one of them thinks you’re with the other and you can go into the lab and get some work done.”

9

Engineers have tons of them between disciplines.

Q : What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
A : Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.
A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a software engineer are travelling in an old Fiat 500 (Bambino) when all of the sudden the car backfires and comes to a halt.
The mechanical engineer says “Ah! It’s probably a problem with the valves, or the piston!”.
The electrical engineer says “Nonsense! It’s most probably a problem with the spark plugs or the battery!”.
The software engineer says “How about we all get out of the car, and get back in again”.
Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body.
One said, “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.”
Another said, “No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections.”
The last said, "Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?’’
You get the idea

10

A couple of computer geek jokes:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

From an early manpage for the UNIX tunefs command:

You can tune a file system, but you can’t tune a fish.

11

Well, we chemists like to mock biologists by calling them chemists who can’t do math.

12

I’m a violist.

'Nuff said.

13

I remembered the reporter joke in the AP style manual (alas, as the manual has gone public, it seems to be gone), which, among other things, gives a guide to commonly mixed up words…

Burro, burrow. A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a reporter, you’re supposed to know the difference.

14

From my Dad’s profession:

Q: What’s an actuary?
A: Where they bury dead actors.

Q: Why does the actuary always use the urinal on the end?
A: Only half the chance of getting your shoes pissed on.

From my old profession, there are a million musician jokes, but my two favorites involve the same bodily secretion. Here’s one:

Q: What does it mean when the lead guitarist has drool coming out of both sides of his mouth?
A: The stage is level.

From my current field of computers, there are far too many squirming around at the moment.

15

From Academics:

Engineering majors ask “How will we build it?”
Business majors ask “How will we finance it?”
Liberal Arts majors ask “Do you want fries with that?”

16

Two more Actuary jokes:

Q: How can you spot the extroverted Actuary?
A: He’s the one looking at your shoes while he’s speaking.

#2: Three actuaries, seduced by tales of adventure and manliness, decide to go bow-hunting in the woods. They reach a large bush that obscures them from a perfect-looking deer feeding ground. As they sit and wait, they string their bows, smooth the fletchings on the arrows, and wait expectantly.

After a few hours, the Actuaries look up to see a perfectly formed, 10-point Stag walks across the feeding ground.

Like a bolt of lightning, the first Actuary jumps up and shoots an arrow at the Stag. He misses 10 yards to the left.

The second Actuary jumps up and draws on the Stag. He shoots, and misses 10 yards to the right.

The third Actuary jumps up and throws his hands in the air…“We got it!!!”

-Cem

17

Ouch!
Psychologists -

Roses are red violets are blue, I’m a Schizophrenic … and so am I.

18

A friend of mine was a programmer at IBM. After ten years of marriage, he and his wife split up. They were able to get an annulment because they had never actually had sex–he’d just sit on the edge of the bed and tell her how good the sex was going to be.

19

There’s an embarassing number of librarian lightbulb jokes.

How many academic librarians does it take to change a light bulb?

Just five. One changes the light bulb while the other four form a committee and write a letter of protest to the Dean, because changing light bulbs it not professional work.
How many catalogers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Just one, but they have to wait to see how LC does it first.
How many reference librarians does it take to change a light-bulb?

(with an obnoxiously perky smile) “Well, I know where we can look it up!”

20

Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None- that’s a hardware problem.

(Ancient, but what are you gonna do? Texans are too busy making Polish jokes and Aggie jokes to make more current programming jokes.)