Years and years ago I had a roomie who was a computer programmer. Whenever there was a data transmission slow down with a stores' computers, or with the (infant) internet at home, he would joke it was the result of compression on the phone lines running under the roads - there were too many cars out there at the moment. Eventually I heard several other people making similar cracks so I thought it was a widely known computer geek joke.

Until the day I was helping a man at my job who told me he was a programmer as he complained about our registers rebooting mid-transaction the last time he had shopped there. So I quipped, "Oh! there must be too much compression on the cables - all those cars you know..." Guy stood stock still, looking at me quizzically while he thought it over before he started asking me questions. I was so flustered I couldn't tell if he thought I was serious and he was jerking my chain, or if he was serious and believed it was true and wanted to know how it happens.

I don't pull jokes anymore, I'm not good at it.

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