Engineer (not lawyer) joke

[Posted on Quora.com by Steve Thomas]

My sister-in-law, the lawyer, complained that I was always telling Lawyer jokes and requested that I - for once - tell an Engineer joke. So, I obliged with this one:

An Engineer dies and goes to heaven. Arriving at the pearly gates, he finds them closed. After banging on the door, eventually Saint Pete arrives, and looks questioningly at the new arrival. Petey informs the engineer that he must be at the wrong place, as all new arrivals have been accounted for. Pointing out the elevator behind him, he closes the door and the sullen engineer departs.

Arriving in Hell, as soon as the elevator door opens, the engineer is greeted by a blast of heat, the smell of brimstone and sulfur. Mystified at this turn of events, he’s unable to decipher what it was in his previous existence that would have sentenced him to eternity here.

Stepping out, he sees that the path leads across a deep chasm. Lava flows at the bottom, making the crossing dangerous, if not lethal. But as he starts down the path, he realizes the rock is rich in iron ore. Not yet understanding the pecking order, he sees a few ‘warm’ bodies breaking rocks, and calls them over, instructing them to break out the iron ore. Soon enough he’s got iron being smelted, and seeing other rocks that match, soon has steel being made. Within days of his arrival, he’s got a factory going, steel girders and a bridge across the chasm, and begins working on air conditioning equipment.

So the devil, in his office, hadn’t been paying too much attention, until he paused one afternoon and looked out. Seeing the bridge that wasn't there before, the factory, and multiple of his minions toiling for this engineer, he calls down to the head demon to find out what’s going on. The demon tells Lucifer that he hasn’t been able to stop it - this engineer is wrecking havoc with hell.

The devil is thinking about this, recognizing that for the first time in a dozen millennia, there are some improvements happening in hell - when suddenly the phone rings. Looking at the caller ID, he sees that it’s “the other place.”

“What can I do for you, Pete?” the devil asked.

“Yeah, uh ... remember that new arrival you had the other day, that you couldn’t find the papers on? The Engineer?”

“Yep, sure do. We didn’t have any paperwork for him, but he’s here anyway. Why?”

“Well, it turns out he’s ours. We had a little paperwork mix up, his papers got stuck in the wrong folder, so you’ve got to send him back.”

The devil thinks about it for just a split infinity and answers: “No.”

St. Peter is flabbergasted; he’s never had a conflict with the devil before. “No?! What do you mean No? He’s ours - you know the rules. You’ve got to send him back.”

The devil thinks about it just another moment and answered, “I said no. We’re going to keep him. This guy has made more improvements around here in just a couple of days than I’ve seen in several millennia. He’s here, so I’m going to keep him.”

“Oh, Come on, you know it doesn’t work that way. If you don’t send him back, we’ll have to sue you in heavenly court.”

The devil broke out into a huge guffaw. “And where do you think that YOU’RE going to find a lawyer?”