RELATIONSHIP EXERCISE

A lady walked into a drug store and told the pharmacist she needed some cyanide. The pharmacist asked, "Why in the world do you need cyanide?"

The lady then explained she needed it to poison her husband. The pharmacist's eyes got big and he said, "Lord have mercy, I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband! That's against the law! I'll lose my license... They'll throw both of us in jail and all kinds of bad things will happen! Absolutely not! You can NOT have any cyanide!"

Then the lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband having dinner in a restaurant with pharmacist's wife. The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, "Well, now... You didn't tell me you had a prescription".

Offline Humor, Inaugural Edition, June 2006

INTERNET EDITION

A couple of my regular readers complained when writing on contemporary issues I’ve been outright pessimistic…so I told myself lets shell out something positive this time.

I wonder how many of us have actually realized how the Internet has begun to change our lives in recent times. I am still skeptical about the viability of ecommerce in India (Preeti et al wont forgive me for that) but think about how many other ways the Internet has made a difference.

The mind of the married woman demands Pizza at about 2300 hrs one fateful day (err. night). There ain’t any fliers at hand but I have my 24 * 7 Internet enabled system in front of me. “Pizza Kolkata” in my favorite search engine… Bingo…u’ve got a host of options sitting pretty in front of you. The phone connects. The Pizza is delivered in 30 minutes and the mind of the married man is saved for the night from being messed.

No joke…and I remember my school buddy Rajesh Poddar’s (Director of the Kolkata based Calicut Engg Works) piece on Customer Service (Offline April 2006) when I call a couple of days later. The soft utterance of my phone number generates my name, address and ….the absence of a landmark… which was now sought (might’ve caused a problem on the first occasion)…but that’s another story.

During last year’s MW Anniversary Celebrations we are unable to locate a re-christened street name where one of our esteemed speakers lived. Instead of cursing, I type the name of street in the search engine. Bingo…I’ve got the details of a well-known corporate house located on the same street…yep! I have tracked my speaker’s locality.

Stay Online!!

Rajib Kumar, Offline (The Material World Online Management Journal) Volume-4, No- 6, May 2006