Three engineers and three accountants are traveling by train to a conference. At the station, the three accountants each buy tickets and watch as the three engineers buy only a single ticket.
"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?" asks an accountant. "Watch and you'll see," answers an engineer. They all board the train. The accountants take their respective seats but all three engineers cram into a restroom and close the door behind them.
Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, "Ticket, please." The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on.
The accountants saw this and agreed it was quite a clever idea. So after the conference, the accountants decide to copy the engineers on the return trip and save some money (being clever with money, and all). When they get to the station they buy a single ticket for the return trip.
To their astonishment, the engineers don't buy a ticket at all. "How are you going to travel without a ticket?" asked one perplexed accountant.
"Watch and you'll see," answered an engineer. When they board the train the three accountants cram into a restroom and the three engineers cram into another one nearby. The train departs.
Shortly afterward, one of the engineers leaves his restroom and walks over to the restroom where the accountants are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, "Ticket, please."
Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Department person asked the young engineer, fresh out of MIT, "And what starting salary were you looking for?"
The engineer replied, "In the neighborhood of $75,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."
The HR person said, "Well, what would you say to a package of five weeks of vacation, fourteen paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years - say, a red Corvette?"
The engineer sat up straight and said, "Wow! Are you kidding?"
And, the Human Resources person said, "Of course, but you started it."
An engineer was enjoying his very first vacation ever, relaxing on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. It was wonderful, the experience of his life. He was being waited on hand and foot. But a hurricane came, and the ship went down instantly. The man found himself swept up onto the shore of an island. There was nothing else anywhere to be seen. No person, no supplies, nothing.
The man looked around. There were some bananas and coconuts, but that was it. He was desperate, and forlorn, but decided to make the best of it. So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and mostly looked to the sea hoping for a ship to come to his rescue.
One day, as he was lying on the beach stroking his beard and looking for a ship, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Could it be true, was it a ship? No. From around the corner of the island came a rowboat.
But in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen, or at least seen in four months. She was tall, tanned, and her blond hair flowing in the sea breeze gave her an almost ethereal quality. She spotted him waving and yelling and screaming to get her attention and rowed her boat towards him.
In disbelief, he asked, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?" She said, "I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed on this island when my cruise ship sank." "Amazing," he said, "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many of you are there? Where, did you get the rowboat? Wow, you were really lucky to have a rowboat wash-up with you!"
"It is only me." she said, "And the rowboat didn't wash up, nothing else did." "Well then," asked the man, "how did you get the rowboat?" "I made the rowboat out of raw material that I found on the island", replied the woman. "The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches, I wove the bottom from Palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"But," asked the man, "what about tools and hardware, how did you do that?" "Oh, no problem," replied the woman. "On the south side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it in my kiln it would melt into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But, enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?" The engineer was forced to confess that he had been sleeping on the beach. "Well, let's row over to my place," she said. So they both got into the rowboat and left for her side of the island.
The woman rowed them around to a wharf that led to the approach to her place. She tied up the rowboat with a beautifully woven hemp rope. They walked up a stone walk and around a palm tree. There stood an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. "It's not much," she said, "but I call it home.
After a while exchanging stories, the woman asked, "Have you always had a beard?" "No, I was clean shaven all of my life, even on the cruise ship," he replied. "Well if you would like to shave, there is a men's razor upstairs in the bathroom." The man, no longer questioning anything, went upstairs to the bathroom. There in the cabinet, was a razor made from a bone handle, two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. The man shaved, showered and went back down stairs. "You look great," said the woman, "I think I will go up and slip into something more comfortable."
After a short time, the woman returned wearing fig leaves strategically positioned and smelling faintly of gardenia. "Tell me," she asked, "we have both been out here for a very long time with no companionship. Have you been lonely, is there anything that you really miss? Something that all men need, and women, too. Something that it would be really nice to have right now."
"Yes there is, " the man replied, as he moved closer to the woman and fixed a winsome gaze upon her. "Tell me, do you have an Internet connection?"