RIP: "Working Hard or Hardly Working?" Eulogy for a dead joke.

Once before I retired/buried a joke, the annoying camo joke "I can't see you, where'd you go?"

Today another joke is being retired, and by retired I mean retired like a horse is retired to a glue factory. This joke is so overused it's become hackneyed, cliched and very vexing.

Somebody sticks their head into your office/cubicle/mad-bomber-shack and says, "Hey! You working hard or hardly working?" This is usually the office Alec Baldwin who takes it upon himself to keep tabs on what everyone else is doing instead of actually working himself. In it's most evolved form, this one liner is accompanied by "the wink and the gun." Where you wink and point one finger at the victim of your lack of creativity. Getting the combo of bad joke and wink/gun is probably what made you want to become a mad-bomber in the first place.

"Working hard or hardly workin'?"

Yes, you've said it before, I've said it before, everybody's said it before. Ergo, it is DEAD! A large part of the reason I like to put jokes out of their misery is that the quality of person who says it has dropped below acceptable standards. Whoever said that joke the first time was probably a comic genius. Then it got out into the public and the quick witted picked it up and repeated it. But now its been in syndication so long that even the dim-witted have learned it by rote memorization (even if they don't know what it means it always gets a polite chuckle, which, for the dim, is enough.)

Recently a man who I can't name but I think of as "that meathead" popped his head in and shot this one off and I thought, this joke deserves better. So, much like Cervantes killed of Don Quixote to prevent lesser writers from writ ting bad stories about him, I'm putting an end to "Working Hard or Hardly Working."

But I can't leave you with an empty spot in your already shallow joke reservoir, now can I? So I'll provide a few replacements. I guess the intent of this joke is two fold:
1) Be rude and point out that for the 1/10th of a second you walked by somebodies office they don't appear to be working. (THINKING IS WORKING!)
2) Cement in someones mind that you know some clever word play, or are a jerk or something.

So here are my replacement jokes. You poke your head into somebodies office and say:

• "I heard putting your on the feet desk helps prevent heel spurs, do you have heel spurs?"
• "Behold the habitat the endangered North American sloth, he's a beauty."
• "Quick the boss is coming! Look busy!" Then quickly pull out of view and wait for a frantic shuffling sound from inside.
• "Hey you bum, I make more money than you."
• "Is this a bad time? I know if you don't get to daydream about ninjas for an hour each day your doctor said you'd have a seizure."
• "So you're the one working on that big 'How You-Tube Can Save our Company' report I've been hearing so much about."
• "Don't pull a muscle buddy." (This is my fave due to its brevity. Also you can substitute words for buddy to change it up. Try: champ, slugger, and bossman.)

And if someones asks you "Working Hard or Hardly Working" just shake your head and quickly draw in a hiss of breath and say, "Didn't you hear?" Shake head slowly. "That joke is dead." Stand up put one hand on Alec Baldwin's shoulder. "It came as a shock to me, too." Hug. "Let it out. Let it out." Tell them to read my blog.