Assistant Professor

An assistant professor in economics died, and due to a bureaucratic snafu in the hereafter, he was to be allowed to choose his own fate: heaven or hell for all eternity. Being very shrewd for a dead person, he asked St. Peter for a tour of both.

The first stop was hell, where he saw rows and rows of assistant professors sitting chained to desks, in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licked the assistant professors' fingers as they tried to work; demons whipped their backs with chains. Your typical hell scene.

"Wow, this is awful," said the assistant professor. Appalled "Let's see some heaven."

In a moment, they were whisked to heaven and the assistant professor saw rows and rows of assistant professors chained to desks, in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licked the assistant professors' fingers as they tried to work; demons whipped their backs with chains. It looked and smelled even worse than hell.

"What gives, Pete?" the assistant professor asked. "This is worse than hell!"

"Yes," St. Peter replied, "but here your work gets published."

(thanks to anonymous poster on EconJobMarket Rumors)