Engineers. If you live in Calgary, there is a good chance you are an engineer, you are married to an engineer, you work with an engineer, you know an engineer, you’ve seen an engineer, you’ve heard of an engineer, or you’ve thought about shit-kicking an engineer. The word engineer is a swear word in many circles. But why? Is it because we are are logical, precise, and objective? If so, since when are those considered character flaws?

"ERTW, baby, E-fuckin-RTW!"

So what if we start most sentences with “In theory,…” or commonly use the phrases “within an order of magnitude” or “as a first approximation”? Or who cares that our calculators have more buttons than a standard QWERTY keyboard, but no button with an equals sign? Seriously, does it matter that the salespeople at Best Buy and Future Shop cannot answer our questions? There is absolutely nothing wrong with rearranging the contents of a dishwasher to maximize dirty dish density, it just makes sense, and it saves money to boot. And lastly, when people listening to an engineer yawn, it is because they didn’t get enough sleep, why else?

I’ve been told that working with engineers is quite simply painful, but please tell me it ain’t so.