Are We Having Fun Yet?
(Page 3 of 7)
Mar.-Apr. 2008
by Matt Labash, from the Weekly Standard
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Any Genesis subscriber knows that hard toil was originally conceived as a curse. God broke the news to Adam that he’d be forced to stop lounging naked while snacking on fresh fruit—that meals would now be served by the sweat of his brow—and humankind has looked for loopholes ever since.
A Microsoft survey of more than 38,000 people worldwide found that workers, by their own admission, average only three productive days per week. According to a Salary.com/America Online survey, the average worker admits to squandering 2.09 hours of each 8-hour workday, excluding lunch and breaks, and other estimates have put the number as high as 40 percent of each day. A full 70 percent of Internet porn consumption takes place during office hours.
The remedy: Hire a funsultant like Ronald Culberson, who heads FUNsulting, Etc. (the u’s in his logo are shaped like a smile). Not only does Ron understand the “intrinsic power of combining excellence with humor,” he’s even set up a “humor injections” blog, giving cyberslackers a way to have good, clean, nonsarcastic fun.
You could call “energy expert” Gail Hahn of Funcilitators, who can help you practice “fun shui” or conduct some “out of the box Olympics” for team building, and who is “authorized to lead laughter sessions sanctioned by the World Laughter Tour.” Or perhaps Buford P. Fudd-whacker would be more to your liking. He dresses like a “backwoods, country nerd in red suspenders and polyester pants” and promises your employees some “high-octane country sunshine” with his “wacky inventions and crazy stories about kinfolk and farm animals. But there’s always a point to be made, and he weaves valuable insights, motivational messages, and powerful teaching into his tall tales.” Pass the ’shine, Buford!
If I was the kind of employer who was funhibited enough to have to hire a pro, I’d go with the Fun Department of Newark, Delaware, which endeavors to bring recess to work.
Jayla Boire is the company’s marketing maven (nobody has a traditional title). She and her partner Nick Gianoulis, the godfather of fun, had a reputation among their circle of friends as being fun people. “They’d say ‘Oh my gosh, here they come, it’s the fun department,’” Jayla recalls. The two might do something like stage suitcase races (racing down the street with luggage) at a New Year’s Eve party, and Jayla would always be on the picnic committee. An inveterate griller, Nick, who was a district manager in the electrical wholesaling business, was a member of the Circuit Club, which planned fun activities in their workplace.
Since planning all that internal fun can be a real time goblin if you actually want to, well . . . work, Jayla and Nick started thinking about providing a “turnkey solution” for companies that wanted to fun-up the workplace. They ended up joining forces with two other partners, Dave Raymond, the emperor of fun and games, and Mark Doughty, lord of the deal.
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