Skip to main content

The "Shredding Paper" Joke (Workability)

This is a joke I've been using with clients recently that seems to have been pretty successful so far in orienting them to the concept of "workability." 

There's this little boy that won't stop shredding paper. No matter what his parents do, every piece of paper they put in front of him, he tears up. They take him to three different doctors to see what they can do to fix it. The first doctor says that his problem is psychological, and so he prescribes him six sessions with a therapist. At the end of the sessions, they put a piece of paper in front of the boy...and he shreds it immediately. The second doctor says his problem must be neurological, so he does a bunch of tests and prescribes a bunch of different medications in an attempt to curb the behavior, all to no avail. So they take the boy, who by this point is incredibly frustrated by this entire process, to see a third doctor. This doctor, rather than writing a prescription or doing some kind of complex diagnostic, simply walks up to the boy, bends down and whispers something in his ear. The boy looks at him, says "Okay!" and from that moment on, the behavior completely stops. A few weeks go by, and it looks like whatever doctor number three did fixed it. So, curious, the boy's parents ask him what incredible piece of wisdom and insight the doctor gave him. The boy replies:

"He told me if I stopped shredding paper then you guys would stop taking me to see these all these doctors."

This page contains attachments restricted to ACBS members. Please join or login with your ACBS account.