Saturday, February 6, 2010

How Many Government Employees Does It Take to Read an Upside Down Fax?

John Stossel reports:
What would you do if someone sent you a fax, but it arrived upside-down? You’d turn the paper around so you could read it.

So here’s a joke: How many government officials does it take to handle an upside-down fax?

An infinite number, apparently, and lots of time.

Erik Sherman of BNet.com reports that the US Patent Office actually sends letters that say:
The faxed submission was received upside down. We are unable to continue processing these images.

Please resubmit your document.

We called the Patent Office to see if that was true. Spokeswoman Jennifer Rankin said it was, but that it was “not a stupid government policy.” Rather, it’s a problem with their antiquated IT system. She said their system automatically sends such letters when a fax is received upside-down, and that nobody in the department actually sees the faxes or sends the letters.

She said that their IT department was “working on it, and it should be fixed in March.”

1 comment:

  1. Why hurry? It's not like they are going to lose business to a competitor.

    ReplyDelete