A joke from Socialist Poland
3mon 3d ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/SnokenKeekaGuard in jokes
A customer enters a store and asks: “You probably don’t have butter, or do you?” The answer: “Sorry, but we are the store that doesn’t have toilet paper; the one across the street is the one that doesn’t have butter!”
Ok. I guess I'll be the one.
I don't get it.
Normally you ask if a shop sells a specific item. But the joke in socialist times was because of scarcity, they didn't have those items. Therefore the shop that normally sells butter, doesn't sell butter now. But the person is in the wrong shop, because the other shop "doesn't sell butter" (so normally sells butter). So it wasa joke about the absurdity of asking if somebody doesn't sell something with added absurdity that the first clerk even sends the asker to another shop, which also doesn't sell the item, but should do it in principle.
Definition by negation
It'd probably get more traction on a boomer humor community.