The following is not a joke but a story which really happened:

A colleague of mine was working as a support guy at a real big german software company which sells standard software (if you guessed that its name starts with an "S" you are correct). A manager once called and complained that his mouse was "working shaky". The reason was simple: mice worked with balls back then and the device has gobbled up enough dirt that the ball wasn't working properly any more. The solution was simple: clean it.

The guy was told exactly this, but - being a manager - wanted to have it done. So he "played dumb" and complained - until he got to my colleague.

He went straight to his office and told him: "All that talk about dirt is nonsense. You got one of these new mouse pads last month?"

"Yes."

"Well, the company saved on these and they are very poor quality, not completely anti-static and so."

He added some pseudo-technical mumbo-jumbo to that to drive the message home, then went in for the kill: "Whatever we will do the problem will persist because the statical electricity will not be removed. But you could do the following: they have a high-quality carpeting everywhere here, which is - being designed especially for computerized workplaces - completely anti-static, anti-whatsoever and fully digitally compatible. Just unplug your mouse and drag it behind you for some time, this will slowly remove all the static electricity and it will work perfectly again."

Then he ran back to our office and told us all to watch. Right there, at lunchtime, we saw the guy walking his mouse.

bakunin