[78-L] ^Tire swing cartoon – What the Customer Wanted

[Steven C. Barr]

From: "Rodger Holtin" <rjh334578 at yahoo.com>
> In the early 1970’s I worked in a college recording studio and the boss 
> had an old cartoon on the bulletin board above his desk. I’ve thought 
> about its wisdom many times over the years and regret that I didn’t have 
> my own copy. This was long before scanners or fax machines, even before 
> desktop copiers were very common; it was a “Photostat” or early Xerox.
>
> First panel was What the Customer Wanted: a picture of a simple old 
> swing – an old tire suspended by a rope from the branch of a tree.
> Next panel was something like As Designed by Engineering: same tree, two 
> ropes, one on the branch, one on the trunk.
> Next panel was something like As Promoted by Marketing: same tree, two 
> tires, one rope
> Next panel was something like As Modified by Research and Development: 
> same tree, tire, same tire, three ropes one tied to the trunk, one to the 
> branch one to another branch
> Last panel was something like As Installed by Contracting: same tree, tire 
> on the ground, rope tied to trunk of the tree.
>
> Only the First and Last are right, the others I made up from faulty old 
> memory, but certainly building on the pattern that each new version from 
> some Vaunted Professional Department was further from the original concept 
> than the previous, and all but the first were completely unworkable.
>
I would guess this must exist somewhere on the Web...?! It has been around 
for MANY
years...in fact, I can't recall when I first saw it...?! However, I dimly 
recall a different
"last chapter"...one with the swing installed so that the user has to swing 
into the
tree trunk!

Steven C. Barr