UPS drivers were voted the “dumbest people on earth” at the annual gathering of the Society of Industrial Engineers. Citing widespread newspaper accounts detailing how the Engineers had restructured all UPS routes to make only right hand turns (thus saving the delivery giant millions of dollars), the Society also named themselves the “smartest people on earth.”
        “If we hadn’t invented Package Flow Technology and introduced UPS Telematics when we did, UPS would be in the crapper right now,” said Tony Bologna, spokesman for the group. “UPS drivers had been running their routes for almost 100 years and never realized that right hand turns were easier to make than left hand turns. And they thought leaving the bulkhead door open saved them time. How dumb are can they be?“
        “All these UPS drivers thought they were so smart when they sat up their own routes and ran them,” Bologna added, “but we just sat down with a map and a magic marker and showed them to be the dumbest people on earth. The new routes, designed by the industrial engineering department, are models of efficiency. Who needs area knowledge when you have Google Earth?”
        A special award went to former CEO and industrial engineer Mike Eskew, for his role in elevating the Industrial Engineering Dept. at UPS to the rank of Godliness. “No one questions the word of IE at UPS,” Bologna noted, “when we speak, it’s as if God Himself has spoken.” Bologna glossed over the fact that UPS stock has been flat for the last 5 years, noting that Eskew was an engineer, not a “Goddamn financial wizard.”
        A large number of UPS drivers picketed the gathering. They held a demonstration on the sidewalk outside the building, singing songs and carrying signs. One poster read ‘Right Hand Turns are for Cowards’. Others sang a stirring rendition of Willie Nelson’s “Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be engineers.”