engineering is hard

Nov 02, 2025 Last reply: 8 months ago 63 Replies

I have been >reading< this posting since it started. Not all of the posting so I may have missed what I am about to post!! Either way, read till you are smirking or overwhelmed!!

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a Doctor, Lawyer, and a engineer, that were found to be doing dastardly deeds in the Kingdom. The King had them arrested and brought before the Throne. The King said; "You have all been found guilty of doing dastardly deeds in my Kingdom and therefore you shall be punished by going to the Guillotine for execution.

The first up was the Doctor, the Executioner asked "do you want a blindfold or not??". He hung his head and said "Yes". The Executioner asked "do you want heads up or heads down??" To which the Doctor said "heads down". They blindfold him and place him in the Guillotine.

The Executioner reaches and pulls the rope. And shhhhhhhhhhhch!! The blade stops an inch from his neck. Because of the law of the land ye' shall not try to execute twice. Therefore the Doctor had to be set free.

The next up was the Lawyer, the Executioner asked "do you want a blindfold or not??". He hung his head and said "Yes". The Executioner asked "do you want heads up or heads down??" To which the Lawyer said "heads down". They blindfold him and place him in the Guillotine.

The Executioner reaches and pulls the rope. And shhhhhhhhhhhch!! The blade stops an inch from his neck. Because of the law of the land ye' shall not try to execute twice. Therefore the Lawyer had to be set free.

The next up was the engineer, the Executioner asked "do you want a blindfold or not??". He looked straight ahead and said "No". The Executioner asked "do you want heads up or heads down??" To which the engineer said "heads up". They place him in the Guillotine looking up. The Executioner reaches for the rope and the engineer says, "Hold it!! I see the problem!!

I heard that as an English/Scottish/Irish joke.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reminds me of this

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about 12 minutes in. They don't make films like that any more.

>

<snipped an old joke>

It's a UK joke, that plays on the idea that engineers are bit simple.

UK universities only started offering engineering degrees relatively recently - it used to be seen as a skilled trade, and you learned it as apprentice, getting lectures at a trade school.

The fact that it always involved a lot of book-learning wasn't obvious to the traditional professions.

This disdain also extended to scientists, and is embodied in the UK civil service slogan - scientists on tap, not on top.

My guess is that it comes from a UK misunderstanding of the Chinese civil service - the Chinese writing system is hard to learn, and hard to use. You have to practice reading it every day, or you lose the skill.

That meant that all that it took to qualify for the Chinese civil service was literacy, and it didn't matter how you demonstrated that you were literate. The Chinese asserted that they were looking for superior people. It was too easy to be literate in an alphabetic writing system for that to be the basis of selection in the UK, so they went for literacy in the classical languages - Greek and Latin. Engineers and scientists didn't need that, so the civil service decided that they couldn't have first class minds.

It's all pretty silly.

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