I imagine that very few people are unfamiliar with the star of such movies as Liar, Liar, Ace Venture, Man on the Moon and Dumb & Dumber to name a few. Jim Carrey is an extremely funny actor known for his rubber face. The following story is not about Jim Carrey.

In my opinion, one of Jim Carrey's funnier movies was The Mask. If you haven't seen the movie, let me go ahead and ruin it for you. Jim Carey is a bank manager who turns his boring life around when he finds an old mask. Wearing the mask transforms him into a superhuman cartoon like character that loses all inhibitions but lets not focus on the movie. No, let's focus on how Jim Carrey looks when he wears the mask. His face turns green and takes on a rather sinister appearance but let's not focus on that either because, after all, the following story is not about Jim Carrey.

Just after The Mask was released, I accompanied a group of friends to a dance club. I'm not much of a dancer, no, I don't dance, no, I can't dance my way out of a wet paper bag no matter how hard I try, so I spent most of the evening sitting at the bar watching my friends dance. One of my friends, Kat, had danced her heart out all evening and was taking a break as she sat on the edge of the stage adjoining the dance floor. As she was catching her breath, I heard the disc jockey announce, "Paging Jim Carrey! Paging Jim Carrey!" From the darkness of the stage behind Kat emerged a man wearing a reproduction of the sinister "mask" that Jim Carrey wore in his movie. The gentleman walked up behind Kat and tapped her on the shoulder.

Are you familiar with the color of snow? Add a little uranium for a glowing effect and that would be how Kat's face looked when she turned around and saw the hideous creature standing behind her. As I watched the color drain from her face, she jumped up at an immeasurable speed while jumping backwards all in one swift motion. The "mask" moved towards her and she moved away. He moved towards her again. She moved away. He moved towards her again. She moved away. In a matter of moments he was chasing her around the dance floor and she was running as if for her life.

By this time, I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. Kat, on the other hand, had failed to see the humor. Huffing and puffing, she was finally able to get away from him and joined me at the bar. "I guess you aren't a big fan of surprises," I said.

"Not surprises like that!"

Several weeks later we returned to the same club and I watched as Kat almost sat down on the stage. Her butt was almost most planted when she jumped straight up and said. Oh no! I'm not going to make that mistake again!"

The roommate of one of my employees has a friend who constantly brags about his love for hot sauces. He claimed that he would drink a bottle of hot sauce if he could. The roommate said that he would pay him twenty dollars if this guy would drink a bottle of hot sauce in less than two minutes. The friend agreed but made the stipulation that the bottle had to be a standard size Texas Pete bottle. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Texas Pete, it is a popular hot sauce sold in the United States.

The roommate searched the Internet for hot sauces and found something guaranteed to be hotter than hot. It may as well have been named "Set Your Butt On Fire Sauce." Within a few days the sauce had arrived and it was promptly placed into a clean Texas Pete bottle. My employee tells me that one drop of this stuff would immobilize a persons entire mouth.

As soon as the friend arrived for the challenge it was obvious that he was unsure of his decision to take this bet. After several references by his friends suggesting that the young man would be less than manly should he back out, he reluctantly buckled to the peer pressure and opted to go ahead with the challenge.

The friend demanded that there be a glass of milk present to help sooth any pain that might arise during the course of the endeavor. Once he was provided with his milk, the challenge began. He took a large swig of the hot sauce and, instantaneously, his face showed serious signs of displeasure. He chugged some milk and asked for more. He took another swig of hot sauce and drank another glass of milk. He could barely eek out the words while asking for more milk. The process continued until he had finished the hot sauce along with a half-gallon of milk. He had successfully completed a task worthy of gracing the pages of any job resume.

The final result was that this young man ended up doubled over the toilet vomiting out what little brains he had left and was sick for the next couple of days. Didn't anyone ever tell him that there are easier ways to earn twenty bucks? It's interesting to note that the young man thought he had really accomplished something and had impressed his friends. If the truth be known, however, he did impress his friends. They all thought him to be an idiot.

The maintenance crew where I work gets calls for all kinds of things unrelated to their job responsibilities. They do, however, try to accommodate these requests whenever possible. A call was received by one of the secretaries in the building to ask if they could somehow raise a desk in her office for her coworker. The maintenance staff told her that they would see what they could do.

A couple of maintenance guys were dispatched to the office and were met by a woman with an extremely raspy voice. The gentlemen described her voice as sounding like her throat was full of sandpaper. "You'll have to excuse my voice," she said, "but my foot is killing me."

The two fellows could hardly contain their laughter as they tried to figure out how a hurt foot could cause the woman to have a raspy voice.

"The desk isn't tall enough for the secretary who uses it. She stays hunched over the desk and it kills her back. As a matter of fact, she had to go home early today because her back pain had become unbearable. She's been having problems with her back ever since we bought the desk a month ago."

"Why didn't she just lower the chair a little bit?"

"What?"

"Why didn't she just lower the chair?"

The woman began to chuckle as if the maintenance man was crazy. "And just how do you do that?"

One of the guys sat in the chair and pulled up on the handle protruding from under the side of the chair. The seat slowly began to descend. "Just like that."

The maintenance guy stood up and the woman sat in the chair. "I didn't know you could do that," she exclaimed. "The only problem is that now, the arms of the chair are too low.

One of the men pushed a button on the arm of the chair and adjusted the height. "How's that?"

"This is just amazing! Can you guys adjust my chair too?"

"Ma'am, I think you're probably qualified to adjust it yourself."

The following day, a call came in to the maintenance staff from the secretary with the bad back. She called to complain that her chair had not been properly adjusted for her height and demanded that someone be sent, immediately, to rectify the situation.

To the best of my knowledge, she is still waiting.

It is not uncommon for me to have to deal with the occasional salesperson and quite often one of them will drop by my office on the chance that I might actually buy something. On one such occasion, a salesman stopped in on the pretense of giving out catalogs and cheap pens to his "most valuable customers." I still don't quite understand how I could be qualified as a "most valuable customer" since I had never placed an order with the company but the salesman insisted on giving me a pen and catalog none the less.

It just so happened that I was in the market for some of the products his company provided and he took the opportunity to give me all the ins and outs of why I should buy the products from his company. Not once did he mention that the real reason he thought I should buy from him was so that he could earn a commission but, even so, it really didn't matter which company supplied me with the products as long as I could get the products at a fair price.

After his little spiel about his product line, I agreed to buy what I needed from him and he pulled out an order form. He reached in his coat for his pen but was unable to find it. "I seem to have given you my last pen," he chuckled. "Do you have one I can borrow?"

I handed him the pen he had just given me. "Here," I said. "You can keep this one. Some salesman gave it to me."

My order arrived in about a week. Enclosed with the products I had ordered was a small box. I opened the box to find twenty assorted pens, each emblazoned with a different company logo. An enclosed note read, "I thought you'd like to have these. You can keep them. Some salesmen gave them to me."

The salesman and I have been friends ever since.