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Professional Jokes
I don’t mean jokes told by a professional comedian, I mean jokes told about a particular profession. Unlike ‘lawyer jokes’ that I know, I don’t mean jokes others make to poke fun at a particular profession, I mean jokes that those in the profession would tell about themselves — usually with a seed of truth.
The best I can do is to give an example. I am an Engineer and this is about the only Engineer joke I know. Unfortunately, it is best told in person, since it requires sounds and gestures which are difficult to put into writing:
During the French Revolution, a priest, a lawyer and an engineer are all to be executed by guillotine.
The priest is first and he asks to be guillotined face-up so he can face his maker. The executioner complies and cranks up the large heavy blade….
whoosh, clunk (this requires a downward chopping motion with the hand with an abrupt stop along with the whoosh/clunk sound effects)
The guillotine has jammed!
The lawyer yells, “That’s it! You can’t try again, since it would be double jeopardy,” so the priest is allowed to leave.
The lawyer is next and also requests to be guillotined face-up. The blade is cranked up again and…
Whoosh, clunk — the same result. The lawyer is also allowed to leave.
Then it is the engineer’s turn — he also asks to be executed face-up and the blade is cranked up again…
The engineer cries out, “Hey guys! I know how to fix this thing!”
The seed of truth is that to an engineer, fixing the thing is the most important task at hand.
What “professional jokes” do you know? Bonus points if it is your profession.
Published in Humor
All my jokes around my profession of motherhood are just circumstantial tidbits. Like in what other way will you ever tell another person to stop eating your toes?
I’m a lawyer.
Then there are the others:
You already took mine.
Even if that one would have been (if you hadn’t taken it), but I don’t have another one?
The only real jokes I remember from computer programming are things like “the beginning programmer who wrote a program to peform division on 60-bit numbers via repeated subtraction.”
But even a lot of computer people don’t get that one, especially if they never worked with machine language.
However, there’s a physicist joke that’s been around for a while and was even used in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Do clergy count as professions?
A priest, a minister, and a rabbi are talking about how they divide donations between their needs and the (other) work of God. The priest says that they draw a line on the floor, throw the collection plate money in the air, and whatever lands on one side of the line is for their needs, with the rest going to God. The minister says that they do something similar, drawing a circle on the floor, and whatever lands in the circle is for their needs, with the rest going to God.
The rabbi says that they do something similar: “We through the donations into the air, and whatever God wants, he can catch.”
Kinda reminds me of this lawyer joke:
An old man was on his death bed. He wanted badly to take all his money with him. He called his priest, his doctor and his lawyer to his bedside.
“Here’s $30,000 cash to be held by each of you. I trust you to put this in my coffin when I die so I can take all my money with me.”
At the funeral, each man put an envelope in the coffin. Riding away in a limousine, the priest suddenly broke into tears and confessed that he had only put $20,000 into the envelope because he needed $10,000 for a new baptistery.
“Well, since we’re confiding in each other,” said the doctor, “I only put $10,000 in the envelope because we needed a new machine at the hospital which cost $20,000.”
The lawyer was aghast. “I’m ashamed of both of you,” he exclaimed. “I want it known that when I put my envelope in that coffin, it held my personal check for the full $30,000.”
A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were trying to prove all odd numbers were prime.
The mathematician thought about it and finally said “3, 5, and 7 are all odd numbers. 5 is prime. 3 is the n-1 odd number from 5 and it is prime. Seven is the n+1 odd number from five and it is prime. Therefore, by induction all odd numbers are prime.”
The physicist thinks, and thinks about it and finally says, “Take a sample set of odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. All but nine are prime. Nine must be statistical error and all odd numbers are prime.”
The engineer thinks about it, then thinks about it some more. Finally he says, One is odd and it’s prime, 3 is odd and it’s prime, 5 is odd and it’s prime, 7 is odd and it’s prime, 9 is odd and it’s prime, 11 is odd and it’s prime, 13 is odd and it’s prime, 15 is odd and it’s prime . . .”
Q: What do you call the dumbest guy in law school?
A: Your honor.
Q: What do you call a bus load of lawyers going over a cliff?
A: A shame
Q: What do you call it if 1 of the bus seats was empty?
A: A crying shame
Q: What is black & brown and looks good on a lawyer?
A: A Doberman.
Dr Smith was preparing to write a note on his patient’s chart when he reached up and found he had a thermometer behind his ear. Realizing his mistake he said “Oh no, some [REDACTED] has my pen!”
Q: Two doctors are running for the elevator as the door starts to close. How can you tell which is the internal medicine doctor and which is the surgeon?
A: The internist sticks his hands between the doors to stop them while the surgeon sticks his head between them….
In High School, for the students taking calculus it was most often a word game. Like, even numbers are also odd.
“6 is an even number, but 6 is an odd number of legs for a horse…”
I called them arm-waving proofs, because they would make these claims while gesticulating, “but don’t you see (how clever I am)?!?!?”
I use this joke when presenting and have a tech snafu.
A mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a software engineer are driving to a conference when their car breaks down. They pull over to the side of the road and the mechanical engineer says, “It is obviously a problem with the fuel injection system. I suggest that we disassemble to injectors, clean and machine them to higher tolerances. We will increase efficiency by 5%”. The chemical engineer shakes his head and says, “No, it is obviously impurities in the fuel supply. I propose we drain the fuel system, filter out impurities, and refine it to a higher octane. This will increase efficiency bt 7.37%”. The software engineer says “I think we should all get out and get back in again”.
It is only funny because it’s true.
A lawyer version that may only be understood by lawyers is God and a federal judge.
A doctor, priest, and engineer are out enjoying a round of golf. After a few holes, they are held up by the party in front, who is taking a very long time. They ask the general manager what is going on. He replies, “Oh, that’s a group of firemen who tragically lost their eyesight while fighting the clubhouse fire. To show our gratitude, we allow them free rounds of golf.”
The priest says, “What a shame. I will pray for them.”
The doctor says, “I will reach out to my friends and see what help they can provide.”
The engineer asks, “Why can’t they play at night?”
Lawyer arrives at the Pearly Gates, protesting that he’s too young to have died – he’s only 45 years old. Peter responds, “but according to your billing time sheets you’re at least 70.”
This one does seem like a professional inside joke.
The only professional inside joke I can think of is when I asked a lawyer for a recommendation for a competent and honest lawyer, he only laughed. The more I asked what he was laughing at the harder he laughed. He saw a joke in there somewhere and it was a riot.
Maybe a lawyer can explain the joke to me. :)
Q: Why do lawyers wear neckties?
A: To keep their foreskins pulled back.
Told to me by a female lawyer I worked with, BTW . . .
Now for jokes in my profession:
This one engineering student was waiting for his engineering student buddy outside the class building. When the friend showed up, he rode in on a brand new bicycle.
“Where’d you get the bike?” the first student asked.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” the friend said. “I was walking across the quad to come here, when this beautiful girl rode up on her bike. She got off, removed her clothes, and said to me, ‘You can have anything you want.’ So I took her bike.”
“Good choice,” the first student said. “Her clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”
Just how many “man walks into a bar” jokes are there?
Man walks into a bar with a gator on a leash, and asks the bartender “Do you serve lawyers here”? “Sure do,” says the bartender. The man says “Great, I’ll have a beer and a lawyer for my friend.”
A new client came to see a lawyer. “I’d like to know how much you charge?” said the client.
“Of course,” the lawyer answered, “I charge $400 to answer three questions!”
“Well that’s a bit steep, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” said the lawyer, “And what’s your third question?”
Woman walks into bar. Sits next to man. Seeing gun in pocket. Saying you KGB or happy seeing me?
BANG! Was KGB.
If you were sitting on the balcony at the resort early in the morning and you noticed your wife and her divorce lawyer drowning in the pool and you could save only one, would you go ahead and order breakfast or would you read the paper first?
Guy is walking on the beach and notices a partially covered, tarnished old lamp. He picks it up and brushes it off and out comes, of course, a genie. The genie tells him the standard rules. Three wishes, but this is special because this is the patron genie of lawyers and whatever he grants the man, every lawyer gets twice that.
The guy asks for $20M, tax free, in his bank account and the genie tells him it’s done, but every lawyer got $40M. The guy tells the genie that he really doesn’t know if his wish was granted, so for the second he wants something he can see, a bright red Ferrari 458. It appears beside him, and the genie reminds him that every lawyer has two.
The guy appears in deep thought and the genie is getting impatient. He wants the third wish, and after a pause, the guy says, “OK, I want you to beat me half to death.”
“Scare me half to death” seems better to me.
One other version says, “I’ve always wanted to donate a kidney.”
then there is the old engineer who said that every engineer should have a wife and a mistress. When you are away, your wife thinks you are with your mistress and your mistress thinks you are with your wife. This means you can go the lab and get some real work done.
My favorite lawyer joke: A lawyer left the dealership, parked at his office, and opened the door of his new BMW, when suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it off completely. When the police arrived at the scene, the lawyer was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW. “Officer, look what they’ve done to my Beeeemer!!!”
“You lawyers are so materialistic, you make me sick!!!” retorted the officer, “You’re so worried about your stupid BMW, that you didn’t even notice that your left arm was ripped off!!!”
“Oh @#”, replied the lawyer,”Where’s my Rolex???!
To be serious for a moment: When I was a kid, lo those decades ago, lawyers were generally admired, maybe even envied. I can remember the exact time when I developed a mild contempt for the profession, and why, but overall, what went wrong? I honestly don’t know.
Well, it starts with the fact that, at a certain point in the not-too-distant-past, a whole lot of people with college degrees decided to go to law school. A whole lot. And that, needless to say, spawned more law schools and more law schools who would take these folks. But that’s a different topic not suitable for a humor thread.
Fair enough.
One more:
In a bar some guy about half in the bag yells, “Lawyers are all a–holes!”
Another patron gets up and tells him, “I resent that. Take that back or there will be trouble and it won’t go well for you.” The guy responds, “What? Are you a lawyer?”
“No, I’m an a–hole.”
What’s the difference between a puppy and television producer?
The puppy stops whining after six weeks.
How many television directors does it take to change a light bulb?
Ready three…. No. Ready two…. No…
One! One! One, damn it!
Now those sound like a real professional inside jokes.
I’d tell you a chemistry joke, but I probably wouldn’t get a reaction.