Thought list members might like this -- another rare example of the
archival/RM joke. It was posted as a true story on several Internet
humour newsgroups. The author is connected with Arctos (www.arctos.com),
an information management company serving the real estate industry.

-----------

From: "dcoble" <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: alt.jokes,rec.humor,za.humour
Subject: True story (original)...
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 16:43:52 -0500


From: [log in to unmask]

I once oversaw the management of a small downtown office
building in Phoenix which was leased in part to a major regional
bank. The bank kept complaining of scorpions in the building.
Desert scorpions are small critters with a nasty sting, much
like a bee sting. And, the bank's secretaries would sit on the
floor to go through bottom file drawers and sometimes would get
stung on the behind.

So the building manager called the pest control company and they
sprayed the building. Still got complaints. Sprayed again. Still
complaints.

Clearly another strategy was needed. The pest control contractor
pointed out that scorpions are unusual in downtown Phoenix and
there were no complaints from other tenants on other floors of
the building. He and the building manager concluded that the
bank itself was bringing the scorpions into the building from
their record center warehouse out in the desert. They alerted
the bank to this source of the problem, but the bank refused to
take any counter measures and continued to complain that it was
a building problem.

After several more sprayings, we started to get concerned about
the risks of putting more insecticide into the building. Our
pest control contractor was adamant that sprayings would do no
good if scorpions kept being reintroduced into the building with
each delivery to the bank from its records warehouse. So I asked
the pest control contractor and the building manager to look
into the possibility of environmentally safer biological controls
such as natural enemies of the scorpion.

A few days later I received a copy of a memorandum from the
building manager to the bank facilities department. He had also
posted a copy of this memo on the bank employees' bulletin board:

   "Building management recognizes recent employee complaints of
   scorpions in the bank's records management areas. We have
   attempted to use pesticides but fear that increasing the
   level of pesticide could pose a health risk for some
   employees.

   "Because scorpions are native to our desert country and
   appear to be entering the building in the storage boxes
   delivered from the bank's desert warehouse, we have
   researched safer natural biological controls such as those
   which keep scorpions in check in their desert environment. We
   have found that scorpions have only one natural enemy.

   "Should there be any further complaints from the bank or its
   employees on this matter, building management will be pleased
   to introduce rattlesnakes into the records management areas."

We had no more complaints.




==========================================
Bennett McCardle  <[log in to unmask]>
  146 Brunswick Avenue, Apt. # 1
  Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 2M2
  tel 416-921-2287
==========================================