cmdln.org (a sysadmin blog)

Rarely do I get emails that are wor­thy of even read­ing let alone shar­ing with oth­ers. This one how­ever, is pretty funny, and seems to be fairly accu­rate.

A man in a hot air bal­loon real­ized he was lost. He reduced alti­tude and
spot­ted a woman below.

He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised
a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am”.
The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air bal­loon hov­er­ing approx­i­mately
30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north lat­i­tude
and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in IT Sup­port”, said the balloonist.

“I am”, replied the woman, “How did you know”?

“Well”, answered the bal­loon­ist, “every­thing you told me is tech­ni­cal but
I’ve no idea what to make of your infor­ma­tion and the fact is I’m still
lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If any­thing, you’ve delayed
my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management”.

“I am”, replied the bal­loon­ist, “but how did you know?”

“Well”, said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going.
You have risen to where you are due to a large quan­tity of hot air. You made
a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect peo­ple beneath
you to solve your prob­lems. The fact is you are in exactly the same posi­tion
you were in before we met, but now, some­how, it’s all my fault.”