True story. A couple weeks ago my wife was in the hospital. The doctor said she was fine returning to work, but wrote a note saying she wasn't allowed to drive or operate heavy equipment. She's an industrial paint technician, so she just uses simple lab equipment (mixers, etc.). No issue.

Her boss read the note and said "you don't drive anything here, so we're good."

Then she got a call from HR. They wanted to know "what weight of equipment she wasn't allowed to operate." Which doesn't even make sense as a question for somebody in her job. I mean, are we going to weigh a stationary paint mixer and make the decision based on what the scale says? And they kept insisting that they had no idea what "operating heavy equipment" might even mean. I knew, my wife knew, her boss knew, Google knew, but HR was completely clueless.

We wound up getting the doctor to absolutely murder the language in the note so that it was clear to HR that the note just meant "no driving." But the whole time I had that Twain quote going through my head - "Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it."