A local city was getting ready to outfit all of their streets with new telephone polls. They had three contract companies that submitted equal prices: A group of Irishmen, a group of Italians, and a group of Polish men.
They decided to assign each team a street and see how many they could install in a day. They would decide who the winner was at sundown.
When the sunset, the three teams came to city hall to report their work. The mayor asked the Irishmen how many they installed and they proudly replied, "Turty tree." The mayor was impressed. He then asked the Italians how many they did and they replied, "Hey, yo, like 62 or something. Fugetaboutit." The mayor smiled with approval. Then he asked the Polish group how many they did and they replied proudly, "Five, your honor."
Confused, the mayor said, "Five? Why are you so proud if you only did five when the other teams did so many more?" The Polish guys said, "Sure they did more, but did you see how much they left sticking out of the ground?"
The mayor then explained that the poles needed to leave that much above ground to hang the telephone wires. The Polish group apologized and explained that they misunderstood what the challenge was. The mayor gave the contract to the Italians who then hired illegal immigrants to cut costs. There was a terrible uproar over how the situation was handled and the mayor resigned his position a month later over the scandal. To this day, the city is still working on getting new telephone poles installed.