An Engineer, A Geologist, and Some Humourless Prick Walk Into A Bar…

Freespeechers 53 Comments
Rig Pigs – they don’t make ’em like they used to. (via email)

APEGA, as you probably know, is the association overseeing the professional and ethical conduct of engineers and geoscientists in Alberta.
Attached is a portion of the December issue of the monthly PEG magazine dealing with a disciplinary issue from 2012. Apparently, APEGA is now also the arbiter of politically correct jokes as this member has been required, by a disciplinary committee ruling, to write an open letter to all 70,000 members of APEGA apologizing for an off-colour joke he told in a van full of oilfield workers.
A tasteless joke.
In a van full of oilfield workers.
In the field.
Shocking.
APEGA – doing the jobs the human rights committees won’t even touch anymore.

PEG_DEC_2013_pg_91.JPG

53 Replies to “An Engineer, A Geologist, and Some Humourless Prick Walk Into A Bar…”

  4. Any time you can tell a joke that causes an association of 70,000 spineless dorks to publicly humiliate, degrade and ridicule themselves with such PC crap, it’s worth it.

  6. “There were ten individuals from various companies and diversities riding in the van”.
    The driver needs to check out the ethnicity, religion,place of origin and sexual preferences of every passenger as he lets them into the van.
    A check at the door with a clip board would be a good idea ; “okay people, declare your group identity”. “Lessee now whatta we got here…. gay-one, East Indian -one,
    Ukrainian-one, transgender-one, Afro- American-one,Afro-Canadian -one, Newfoundlander-four, Indian, sorry,Aboriginal-one”.
    This would ensure that no off color jokes offended the sensitivities of anyone.
    Gee,isn’t it great, we’re getting almost as afraid to say anything in Canada today as the people were in the old and revered Soviet Union!
    Now, THIS is progress! (and I wanna hear that joke,too!)

  7. Which is sadder, the fact that you take offense at a tasteless joke or that you report your offense at said tasteless joke?
    BTW anyone know what the joke was?

  8. Once the social “sciences” invades REAL science like engineering, etc., the game is over. Watch for a steady decline in the quality of engineers in the future.

  11. “Snow wops”
    http://minx.cc/?post=346005
    This is what you expect with “free speech”. Fortunately we in Canada don’t suffer from this as our recently neutered (gov’t given & somewhat taken back) right to free expression was reined in by our overlords at the Supreme Court of Canada.
    Thank you SCOC for saving us from ourselves. When I was a kid, certain groups, for example those now known as “mentally challenged” were not to be teased, or mocked, as they weren’t expected to be able to fight back in like manner. I’m perfectly alright with this line of thinking. These same protections are now extended to gays, to people of non white colors, and people that practice somewhat deviant religions. I can assume for the same reason… i.e. that the SCOC thinks they’re not able to defend themselves for much the same reason.
    On the day, and for days after their decision on how to rein in our gov’t given right to free expression, the newspapers of record in Canada bent over trying to grasp the importance of the striking down of Canada’s prostitution laws. The media, couldn’t care less of free speech in Canada, only for what they do on their weekends.

  15. Well, well, well.
    I went to the APEGA website, ( http://www.apega.ca/ )
    Unbelievably, they have a SEGREGATED website for “foreign educated” applicants. ( http://www.iegatapega.ca/ )
    On their ghetto website, they feature various diversities, including a Muslim woman, an Asian, and a Indian Indian)
    Where da black guy at?
    This is outrageous and hateful racism in its most virulent form.
    Under the foreign application, an applicant must supply proof of education, and being of good character and reputation. Is that why APEGA excluded blacks? Figured they couldn’t qualify?
    I don’t know if this APEGA thing is a hate organization in Canada, but it should be.
    They owe the world’s 840 million black people an apology.
    PS: And what was that other qualification all about, the proof that an applicant was fluent in ENGLISH? (In a bilingual country?)
    I’m outraged.

  16. Well, well, well.
    I went to the APEGA website, ( http://www.apega.ca/ )
    Unbelievably, they have a SEGREGATED website for “foreign educated” applicants. ( http://www.iegatapega.ca/ )
    On their ghetto website, they feature various diversities, including a Muslim woman, an Asian, and a Indian Indian)
    Where da black guy at?
    This is outrageous and hateful racism in its most virulent form.
    Under the foreign application, an applicant must supply proof of education, and being of good character and reputation. Is that why APEGA excluded blacks? Figured they couldn’t qualify?
    I don’t know if this APEGA thing is a hate organization in Canada, but it should be.
    They owe the world’s 840 million black people an apology.
    PS: And what was that other qualification all about, the proof that an applicant was fluent in ENGLISH? (In a bilingual country?)
    I’m outraged.

  17. This reminds me of something I was thinking about the other day when reading about the Steyn/Steort flap over some old Rat Pack joke. These jokes are exceedingly tame compared to the jokes and stories I heard in places I’ve worked and lived. It’s almost like the the wordy social class and the working class exist in two separate planets.
    Sure, we officially had PC speech codes, anti-harassment and diversity training but in practice the off color jokes were sill common on the crews. Some would seek me out to tell me the latest blonde joke and it was all in good fun. In my experience those who told such jokes were almost never the ones who truly hated minority groups. The real haters were the perpetually angry losers who wanted to blame their failures on others and those people never have a sense of humor.
    The apology was likely the result of pressure from the Human Resource Department. They are not humorless hater-losers but they are generally afraid of their own shadow when it comes to diversity issues.

  18. My dear Ms. McMillan!!! You really are going to have to program your “decency filter” to understand Latin!
    🙂 HAR!!!

  20. The real problem with such organizations is that through their accompanying “Right to Practice” provincial legislation, they have enormous power over their membership. They can’t work within their profession unless they are members in good standing.
    Professional associations should be entirely free from government and exclusively subject to the marketplace. Let the Insurance companies sort the Wheat from the Chaff.

  21. As a previous long time member of apegga who now practices in another province it’s worth noting for non-engineers that apegga is not like a Union – how so – in most, if not all, cases apegga will go out of their way to ‘go after’ one of their own members. I’ve read almost if monthly newsletter for 11 years and while some cases where correct in addressing public concerns most were mostly witch hunts. Several years ago they tried to have a global warming public debate in the newsletter with the pro-global warming bias completely showing and were roundly shouted down by the majority of the membership.

  22. The thing about ethnic jokes is that the generalities that they are based on are are true. I could never be offended by an ethnic joke because the Irish part of me knows they really are drunks, the Scottish part of me knows they really are cheap and the German part of me knows the Nazis were a natural fit. What’s the deal?
    The one bit of political correctness that is absurd is the military not allowing soldiers to dehumanize the enemy. Now instead of killing subhuman sloths, they have to kill humans. Then they come home frigged in the head and become low-functioning humans that end up killing themselves.

  23. A Canadian, an American and a Scotsman are killed in a single car crash.
    They all go to heaven, but Saint Peter tells them there’s been a mistake and they can all go back, albeit with a $100 fee each. The American pays up and is returned immediately, waking up in the car, alone, with a gash on his forehead.
    By now emergency services arrive, asking him where the other two were that witnesses had seen in the crashed car. The American told them of their heavenly trip, and the responders, seeing he had a concussion, asked him what really happened to which he reported “look, the last I heard, the Scotsman was haggling over the price and the Canadian was trying to figure out what government program was going to pay for this!”

  24. Same thing is going on in ASTTBC, my org for technicians and technologists, who are the underlings of the P.Engs (those who do the heavy lifting for the iron ring set).
    A VERY PC organization. Yes, they do good things to, but have reached beyond the original mandate and are also doing all those socially progressive things.

  25. someone needs to file a “Hurt Feelings Report”.
    on the flipside, Calgary Herald reports there is an approx 50% turnover rate in the oilsands. We long ago ran out of crackers, and had to go overseas.
    what a pickle!

  27. Each organization comes into being to serve the interests of the contributors, fills up with smooth talking freeloaders and then coasts to oblivion.

  28. No different from any other organization. Every so often you have to “clean house”.
    Just like the Senate, they get stale and arrogant.

  29. Don nails it with the following, “Gee,isn’t it great, we’re getting almost as afraid to say anything in Canada today as the people were in the old and revered Soviet Union!”
    I’m surprised that laws have not yet been passed that a spouse must turn in the mate for bad attitude statements. They will come soon.

  30. Off to the Minister of bad jokes.
    Time people had no affiliation with any of these so called groups.
    You would think with the Duck dynasty controversy these crypto fascists would re think their plan. Nope I guess the idea of thought control is just to delicious for them.
    It never works for long ,but boy the control freaks love this.

  31. Here’s the joke:
    2 girls in their burk-as and one says to the other,
    “Do you think this burk-a makes my bomb look too big”

  32. Not even a humourless prick. After all, there is a vaguely masculine connotation to the word prick.
    How about a humourless, uptight, I’m-so-conflicted-I-don’t-know-whether-to-squat-stand-or-tattle bedwetter.

  33. 7. Simple Minds, Oct. 22, Massey Hall: At their first Toronto show in 11 years, these Scottish dance-rock veterans delivered a triumphant show with charming, impish frontman Jim Kerr – a smiling, warm and animated presence – the centre of it all. “We should be paying you – but we’re Scottish,” joked Kerr as the audience broke out in a prolonged chorus of “la, la, la, las” during Don’t You Forget About Me.
    http://www.torontosun.com/2013/12/27/top-10-toronto-concerts-of-2013

  35. There was a time when Clayton Milroy and one secretary ran everything from one office in Edmonton. Now APEGA is another bloated bureaucracy only in charge of itself

  37. There once was a lady from APEGA
    Who had a lovely small ass
    But it’s not what you think
    It had four legs long ears and ate grass!

  38. Contra nold (above), I read about this in the September issue. If you read page 107 here:
    http://www.apega.ca/Members/Publications/Magazines/ThePEG/2013/september/index.html
    on paragraph 4, you can see that the joke was described as “an off-colour and racially insensitive joke involving persons of middle-eastern descent, camels, and bestiality.”
    I don’t know what the joke was, but I spent most of the day being bothered by the fact that there’s a joke involving persons of middle-eastern descent, camels, and bestiality, and I’ve never heard it.
    I do feel bad for [Professional Engineer A], as I don’t know how you could know a joke involving persons of middle-eastern descent, camels, and bestiality, and NOT tell someone.
    But alas, with humour, you have to know your audience, and there is zero chance that the engineering association is going to tell [Professional Member B] to “suck it up”.
    In APEGA’s defence, the vast majority of disciplinary hearings seem legit – people pretending to be engineers when they’re not, doing substandard work, securities fraud, and so forth. In March, they even punished a ~60 year-old guy for importing child porn. (A crime worthy of 60 days in prison, on weekends, apparently.)

  40. An ethnic (pick one, anyone) walks into a bar with a frog on his head.
    Bartender: Where the hell you get that?
    Frog: It started out, as a bump on my ass.
    Old, I know …whatever..

  41. Precious eh,
    An association to oversee the ethical conduct of its members, guess you get everything you ask for. Must be an Alberta thing.
    On my jobs if you are not a team member you don’t get to stay, as an industry we work with all nationalities and have females as well, leave your feelings at home or stay there, no individual trumps the team, it can be a hard place to work thats why you get paid the big bucks.
    Guess someone needs running off, just to avoid the hurt feelings.

  42. Give me a f-cking break
    Oh and sorry for not spelling out the “F” word in full,
    Oh and sorry for apologizing for not spelling the “F” word in full (etc…)

  43. I used to admire engineers because the dues they pay are are fraction of that paid by other professional organizations. When did they become assholes?

  44. If I had to write that letter, I would start off by repeating the “offensive” joke so my target audience could understand the context. Let’s see, “Copper wire was invented when a Dutchmand and a Scotsman spotted a penny simultaneously” (told to me by a Dutchman).

  45. A question: why didn’t he just tell APEGA to stick its disciplinary process and letter up its arse?

  46. I believe that like most professional organizations, membership “in good standing” is required.

  47. Yeah, but at what price?
    He had the option of telling them to stuff it, or he’d get a lawyer and go to the press and put them out to the public as the bedwetters they actually are.

  49. “humourless, uptight, I’m-so-conflicted-I-don’t-know-whether-to-squat-stand-or-tattle bedwetter.”
    Now that’s funny. And remarkably accurate.

  50. Here in BC if your “Feelings” get hurt at work you can be eligible to go on compensation for your “injures”
    From their policy book
    “”bullying and harassment” (a) includes any inappropriate conduct or comment by a person towards a worker that the person knew or reasonably ought to have known would cause that worker to be humiliated or intimidated,”
    http://www2.worksafebc.com/Publications/OHSRegulation/Policies-WorkersCompensationAct.asp#SectionNumber:D3-116-1

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