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Useless
You Are in a Helicopter
A helicopter was flying toward Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all the aircraft’s navigation and communications equipment. Due to the extreme haze that day, the pilot now had no way of determining the course to the airport. All he could make out was a tall building nearby, so he moved closer to it, quickly wrote out a large sign reading “Where am I?” and held it in the chopper’s window.
Responding quickly, the people in the building penned a large sign of their own. It read: “You are in a helicopter.” The pilot smiled, and within minutes he landed safely at the airport. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked how the sign helped him determine their position.
“I knew it had to be the Microsoft building,” the pilot replied, “because like any computer company’s help staff, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”
Reader’s Digest, Contributed by Linda A. Tozer, August, 1997, p. 26
The Chairman
When Irving S. Olds was chairman of the U.S. Steel Corporation, he arrived for a stockholders’ meeting and was confronted by a woman who asked, “Exactly who are you and what do you do?” Without batting an eye, Olds replied, “I am your chairman. Of course, you know the duties of a chairman—that’s someone who is roughly the equivalent of parsley on a platter of fish.”
Bits and Pieces, June 27, 1991, p. 7
Handy Post It’s
As with many innovations, the originator of 3M’s sticky yellow Post-its didn’t know what he had—at first. Researcher Spence Sliver saw curious about what would happen if he mixed an unusual amount of monomer into a polymer-based adhesive he was working on. The result was an adhesive that would “tack” one piece of paper to another and even restick, without leaving any residue on the second piece of paper. The company had no use for the new adhesive until 3M chemist Arthur Fry began having problems in the choir loft. The slips of paper he used to mark pages in his hymnal often fluttered to the floor, leaving him frantically searching for his place. Then he remembered Silver’s adhesive. Fry’s better bookmark soon metamorphosed into the handy Post-its that have become a fixture in offices throughout the country.
Discipleship Journal, Issue #48, p. 28
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