Fire Drill!

Me at work: La la laaaa… listening to music on my headphones… BWWWOOONNKK!!!! BWOOONNKK!!!

There was a fire drill today. Everyone piles out of the building and crosses the street to, in the event of an actual fire, watch the building burn. I made sure to grab my car keys and phone just in case it wasn’t a drill, but I left my Diet Dr Pepper behind to fend for itself.

Now on each floor they have fire marshals that get nifty blinking armbands and flashlights. Unfortunately, as a consultant I can’t be trusted with this type of responsibility. This is probably good though, because as a consultant I would first need to have a meeting, and do some research into the most efficient way to exit a burning a building. I should have a proposal for you in a week or so.

I once knew a guy, a real object-oriented evangelist, who had hung up a sign on his cube that said “Manipulate Every Object” (meaning don’t create anything that isn’t useful). I told him as a consultant I had a similar motto: “Bill Every Hour”.

While I’m on the subject, here is my favorite consultant joke:

A man walks into a Silicon Valley pet store looking to buy a monkey.

The store owner points towards three identical looking monkeys in politically-correct, animal-friendly natural mini-habitats.

"The one on the left costs $500," says the store owner.

"Why so much?" asks the customer.

"Because it can program in C," answers the store owner.

The customer inquires about the next monkey and is told, "That one costs $1500. It knows Visual C++ and Object-Relational technology."

The startled man then asks about the third monkey.

"That one costs $3000," answers the store owner.

"3000 dollars!!" exclaims the man. "What can that one do?"

To which the owner replies, "To be honest, I've never seen it do a single thing, but it calls itself a Consultant."