Fun_People Archive
2 Oct
Techniques in Conflict Resolution

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed,  2 Oct 96 12:39:40 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Techniques in Conflict Resolution

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: guy@netapp.com (Guy Harris)
Forwarded-by: "Braun E. Brelin" <bbrelin@bsquared.com>
Forwarded-by: Joanne Petersen <joanne@hpcc01.corp.hp.com>

A Scotsman and an Englishman lived next door to each other. The Scotsman
owned a hen and each morning would look in his garden and pick up one of
his hen's eggs for breakfast.

One day he looked into his garden and saw that the hen had laid an egg in
the Englishman's garden. He was about to go next door when he saw the
Englishman pick up the egg. The Scotsman ran up to the Englishman and said
that the egg belonged to him because he owned the hen.  The Englishman
disagreed because the egg was laid on his property.

They argued for a while until finally the Scotsman said, "In my family we
solve disputes in the following way: I kick you in the groin and time how
long it takes you to get back up, then you kick me and time how long it
takes for me to get back up, whoever gets up quicker wins the dispute."

The Englishman agreed to this and so the Scotsman found his heaviest pair
of boots and put them on, he took a few steps back, then ran toward the
Englishman and kicked as hard as he could.  The Englishman fell to the floor
howling in agony for 30 minutes.

Eventually the Englishman stood up and said, "Now it's my turn to kick you."
The Scotsman said, "Keep the damn egg."

© 1996 Peter Langston