Sideswipe: A honking good effort

Arise, Sir Lion.

Mel writes: "Just before our departure - for the practical test of my full driver's licence - the instructor asked me to test the horn to make sure it worked. Knowing full well that the horn did not work, I turned my head to the right and let out a vocal 'hooonk'. He replied, unconvinced, 'What was that?' I told him it was my car's horn. He dryly noted that he hoped my driving was better than my honking ... I passed no problem."

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The following is not satire. It is a real health and safety internal communication from a large Auckland company.

"A near-miss incident occurred recently in the Auckland office when the bowl section of a coffee cup became detached from the handle prior to being used by a staff member. This occurred near the top level of the internal stairwell ... The broken section of the cup rolled down the stairs to the first landing, where it was retrieved and disposed of by the person involved. No harm occurred. However, the consequences may have been different had the cup been full of hot drink or if the detached part had hit anyone ... This incident has been investigated and improvement measures to prevent recurrence have been identified. Remove any defective kitchen tableware you discover and report as soon as possible to the regional office manager. Do not attempt to use any defective or broken equipment ..."

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Stupid job interviews No 1: "I was left alone in a room to complete a multi-choice personality test. With the test paper, the interviewer unwittingly handed me the sheet containing the answers. I got that job. Another interview was conducted like an interrogation, with a desk lamp pointing at my face in an otherwise darkened office, and the interviewer trying to catch me out with obscure questions about minor details on my CV. I was already known by the company because I'd been working for them for the past few weeks as a temp. I didn't get that job.

Stupid job interviews No 2: "When I applied for a credit manager's job at a large firm whose head office was in Hamilton, I was asked: 'Have you had a hysterectomy?' I answered: 'Yes.' I got the job."

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A reader reckons the couple who handed over $1500 for a TV they broke mid-coitus got a raw deal.

"The Crowne Plaza in Christchurch will have insurance. Threatening to call the police was an empty threat - they would have told them to put in an insurance claim. If the couple had their own contents insurance, odds are they could have claimed under the liability section of their policy and would have had to pay only the excess."

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Indian taxi driver Harpreet Dev has become a minor celebrity in his home town of Bhatinda, in Punjab, by driving everywhere backwards. The 30-year-old has been issued with a licence to drive in reverse anywhere in the state. His passion for driving backwards came about one night in 2003 as he returned from a party and his car developed a fault and only the reverse gear worked. "I always wanted to do something different, something unique. Now, I have reversed the complete gear mechanism of the car so that I get maximum speeds while driving backwards." Source: telegraph.co.uk

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View today's Herald cartoon

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