Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ut-sally.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hao!seismo!ut-sally!crandell From: crandell@ut-sally.UUCP (Jim Crandell) Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: You deserve a break today. Give me your arm. Message-ID: <2313@ut-sally.UUCP> Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 22:13:02 EDT Article-I.D.: ut-sally.2313 Posted: Wed Jun 20 22:13:02 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 23-Jun-84 03:52:06 EDT Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 50 Recently I was overhauled for replying in a pseudo-common-sense fashion to the ``I don't care...'' gaff, and in case anyone else was similarly offended, I propose to make amends by submitting a couple of nonoriginal (and reputedly factual) jokes. Enjoy it while it lasts. Along the same lines, a major newspaper (whose name I have mercifully forgotten) once carried a story about a notable scandal in city hall, the details of which were so complex and confusing that the city's governing body remained in a quandary for several days as to how to administer the appropriate retribution. The story's headline read ``... council can't decide whom should be fired''. An incredulous reader responded -- in a letter to the editor which, remarkably, made the editorial page -- ``Whom should be fired? That's easy! Whom wrote the headline? Him should be fired.'' I wouldn't report this one except that the friend who related it swore it really happened. Not too many blocks from where I now sit stands a business establishment of a sort which is fast becoming a bona fide anachronism in cities of any size -- an old-fashioned, Mom-and-Pop-style, corner grocery store. But in the semi-rural lands to the north of the city, the microscopic municipalities that make up the (barely) limited-growth district in the northern reaches of the county, one can still find a few such businesses. It was in one of these that the following exchange took place. Virtually all tbhe customers of this business are local people, many of them elderly, quite a few of them rather poor. The grocer is ``one of them'', and he does his best to keep his prices down, but when you're a low-volume dealer, your choice of suppliers is severely limited, and sometimes there just isn't much you can do. Against this backdrop enters an elderly lady who decides to grouse about the price of eggs. It's not that she really can't afford them, but she's the neighborhood sourpuss, and her reputation is on the line. She gives the poor grocer an earful. ``Yeah,'' he replies, ``ain't that awful? You know, I just don't know why the wholesalers have to keep running up their prices like that. I called up this guy the other day, and I says `Hey, Sam, I got some of my customers paying about as much as they can handle right now. Whatcha tryin' to do, break me?' And he says, `Yeah, I know we upped our prices. Up yours.' '' -- Jim Crandell, C. S. Dept., The University of Texas at Austin {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!crandell