One little lightbulb joke and boom, I’m out on the street

My first testing job I was a temp at a DOD contractor, assigned to curate the test library on the “RCAS” project. One of my duties was to take notes in the daily meeting between testing and development, and report the issues and status that came out of the meeting to the rest of the team. This was 1994, before email was a popular tool, so I printed up the “Test Daily” newsletter, with half a page of meeting notes, and the rest of the page (plus the back if I wanted) to use for other things. I mostly put Far Side cartoons and Dilbert cartoons on there, when Dilbert especially was fresh and edgy, and usually people laughed. The project was under some pressure and an edge had started to creep in, and I was trying to help them blow off some steam.

One time I did a lightbulb joke contest to see who came up with the best punchline to the classic setup: How many RCAS testers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The prize was a packet of saltine crackers and a spork from the cafeteria. I reminded everyone about this contest all week leading up to the big department meeting that was going to happen to learn the state of the project.

At the meeting I revealed the winning punchline: “None. It’s a known issue.” The author got her crackers and spork. The team got the news that after 2 years, the project was going to start over again on a new operating system. And I got a private lecture on corporate morale, and was told that even though I had been asking for a while about coming on board full-time, “for you, there’s a hiring freeze.”

One little lightbulb joke, and boom, I’m out on the street.