Thursday, September 25, 2008

Job done, but where's the lime tree?




An old neighbor who loved to live alone became invalid.  They sent him to a nursing home.  A plot of ground out front used to be his garden with some trees growing alongside flowers and other bushes.  One of the tree species seemed to grow so thick and fast, the front of the house almost became a jungle.  The old guy's daughter came and tried to cut down the tree.  She couldn't manage to remove the tree stump.  She sent her husband the next day to finish the job.  



He finished the job alright.  He cleared off everything including a nice healthy-looking lime tree.  With the job done, he went off.  



Later, the daughter came around again to check.  She screamed.  She couldn't find the lime tree.  She had wanted him to remove only the tree stump.



Moral:  Be careful how you give instructions.  Some people would 'just do it'.



5 comments:

  1. At least she can't blame him for not being thorough, hehe.

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  2. I'd put it to miscommunication. More often than not, what we want to convey doesn't come out the way it's supposed to. Or the listener takes it to mean something else. Or he listens only to certain key words and ignore the rest.

    This is about the same message as the The Blacksmith Story that I want to convey.

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  3. When it comes to precise logic vs. fuzzy logic, fuzzy logic always wins. Maybe we humans were never built for precise thinking...

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  4. ...maybe that explains why my wife's fully-auto washing machine keeps going crazy. She likes to use it as a semi-auto machine and keeps interrupting its sequences.

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