A woman desperately looking for work went into a factory. The personnel manager looked over her resume and regretfully explained to her that he had nothing worthy of her talents. The woman answered that she really needed work and would take almost anything. The personnel manager hemmed and hawed and finally said that he did have a low-skill job on the Tickle Me Elmo line, but nothing else.

The woman happily accepted his offer. He took her down to the line, explained her duties, and told her to report at 8:00 AM the next day.

The next day at 8:45 there was a knock at the personnel manager's door. The Tickle Me Elmo line manager came in and started ranting about the woman who had just been hired. After listening to how badly backed up the assembly line was, the personnel manager suggested that the line manager show him the problem.

Together they went down to the line and, sure enough, Elmos were backed up from here to kingdom come. Right at the end of the line was the woman who had just been hired. She had pulled over a roll of the material used for the Elmos, and had a big bag of marbles. They both watched as she cut a little piece of fabric, took two marbles, and started sewing them between Elmo's legs.

The personnel manager started laughing uncontrollably. Finally, he pulled himself together, walked over to the new employee, and said, "I'm sorry. I guess you misunderstood me yesterday. What I wanted you to do was give Elmo two test tickles."