The IRS sends their auditor to audit a synagogue.

Joke Poo: The HOA Audit

An overly enthusiastic HOA president, Barry, decides to audit the local retirement community’s pickleball club. He’s determined to find some infraction, some hidden cost he can expose to justify raising the already exorbitant HOA fees.

Barry scrutinizes their budget, their equipment, their playing schedule. Finally, he confronts Agnes, the club’s sprightly president. “I see you order a lot of pickleballs,” he says, adjusting his glasses importantly.

“Why, yes, we do,” Agnes replies, a twinkle in her eye.

“And what,” Barry demands, “do you do with all the broken pickleballs? All the cracked, dented, unusable ones?”

Agnes smiles. “That’s a very good question, Barry. We actually save them up. When we have a large enough collection, we send them back to the pickleball manufacturer, and every so often, they send us back a free carton of new balls!”

Barry’s face falls. He was hoping to catch them in some kind of wasteful spending. Undeterred, he presses on. “And what about all the sweatbands? I see dozens of sweatbands purchased every month! What happens to the sweaty sweatbands?”

Agnes nods sagely. “Oh, we collect those too. We wring them out, carefully, and send the collected sweat back to the Gatorade company. They send us coupons for free cases of Gatorade every year.”

Barry sputters, clearly frustrated. He racks his brain for something, anything, he can use against them. Finally, an idea sparks. “And what about all the… adult diapers? I’ve noticed a significant purchase of adult diapers listed in your club expenses!”

Agnes beams. “Ah, yes! We don’t waste anything here at the pickleball club. What we do is save up all the used adult diapers and send them to the HOA.”

Barry’s jaw drops. “To the HOA?!”

“Yes,” Agnes says, her eyes gleaming. “And about once a year, they send us a full-of-shit president like you.”

Okay, let’s dissect this joke and then craft some comedic additions!

Joke Dissection:

• Setup: The joke establishes a classic “auditor vs. audited” scenario, with the IRS auditor acting as the antagonist and the Rabbi as the witty protagonist. The audit setting immediately introduces tension and the expectation of scrutiny.

• Humor Mechanism: The joke relies on a combination of:

  • Stereotype: It uses the stereotype of Jewish frugality and resourcefulness.
  • Unexpected Answer: The Rabbi provides increasingly absurd yet plausible explanations for reusing waste products.
  • Punchline: The punchline is a cutting insult disguised as a logical conclusion to the Rabbi’s recycling practices, turning the auditor into the waste product. It relies on the double meaning of “prick.”
  • Escalation: The questions asked get progressively more inappropriate/ personal.

• Key Elements: IRS audit, Synagogue, Rabbi, Frugality, Waste, Foreskins, Insult.

Comedic Enrichment – Option 1: The “Did You Know” Twist

Original Joke Element: Foreskins and Recycling

Factual Tidbit: The practice of Metzitzah B’peh, involving oral suction after circumcision, has sparked controversy due to health concerns.

Comedic “Did You Know”:

“Did you know that the IRS actually does have a formal policy about accepting biological samples? It’s only applicable if you are filing as a “dependent petri dish” which is a tax benefit claimed primarily by mad scientists.”

Comedic Enrichment – Option 2: The Alternate Punchline

Original Joke Element: The IRS & Bureaucracy

Factual Tidbit: The IRS has a document destruction policy that outlines how different types of documents are destroyed after a specific retention period.

Alternate Punchline:

Instead of: “…and about once a year, they send us a little prick like you.”

Try: “…and about once a year, they send us a shredded document saying, ‘Sorry, that’s not deductible.'”

Comedic Enrichment – Option 3: Expanding the Scenario

Original Joke Element: Rabbi and Foreskins

New Scenario:

The auditor, flustered by the Rabbi’s response, calls his supervisor. “Sir,” he says, “I think I’ve uncovered a massive tax fraud scheme involving…foreskins.”

The supervisor sighs, “Look, Johnson, we’ve been over this. Just because you find a line item labeled ‘Incentive Program – Skin in the Game,’ doesn’t mean they’re shipping us human remains!”

Comedic Enrichment – Option 4: The “Woke” version

Original Joke Element: Inappropriate joke and sensitivity.

New Joke:

The IRS sends their auditor to audit a synagogue. The auditor is doing all the checks, and then turns to the Rabbi and says, “I noticed that you buy a lot of candles.”

“Yes,” answered the Rabbi.

“Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle drippings?” he asked.

“A good question,” noted the Rabbi. “We actually save them up.  When we have enough, we send them back to the candle maker and every now and then, they send us a free box of candles.”

“Oh,” replied the auditor, somewhat disappointed that his question actually had a practical answer.    So he thought he’d try another question, in his obnoxious way.  “Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases?  What do you do with the crumbs from the matzo?”

“Ah, yes,” replied the Rabbi calmly, “we actually collect up the crumbs, we send them in a box back to the manufacturer and every now and then, they send us a carton of matzos.”

“Oh,” replied the auditor, thinking hard about how to fluster the Rabbi.  “Well, Rabbi,” he started, before reconsidering the potentially offensive line of questioning. “Let’s move on to something else”

“What about the fact that you send money to organizations that support the Palestinian cause?” asked the auditor.

“That is a matter of great debate,” says the Rabbi, “about whether that is the right thing to do. But I am not sure how this helps either the Palestinian or Israeli cause.”

“It is simple, sir,” says the auditor, “about once a year, they send us a little prick like you to make sure we have no peace.”

Explanation of Choices:

• I tried to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
• I introduced “woke” elements to bring the joke into the present.
• I focused on the inherent absurdity of the situation and the power dynamics at play.
• I tried to retain the original joke’s humor while making it more palatable to a modern audience.