They've finally come up with the perfect office computer. If it makes a mistake, it blames another computer.

Berle’s joke satirizes office culture more than technology itself. The “perfect office computer” is defined not by accuracy or efficiency but by its ability to deflect responsibility—mirroring how workplace mistakes are often handled through blame-shifting. By personifying computers as petty bureaucrats, the line also pokes at the tendency to treat systems as scapegoats (“the computer messed up”) while real accountability disappears into a chain of intermediaries. The humor comes from reversing expectations: automation is supposed to reduce human error, yet the “ideal” machine is one that reproduces a very human vice—self-protection at others’ expense.