Will Business Humor Rebound With the Economy?

Posted by Kevin Reifler | 1 Comment

“This week on ‘The Apprentice,’ Martha Stewart teaches the kids how to
underreport their taxes…”

A recent throwaway joke on the late-night talkshow circuit, it’s also an
encouraging sign that office humor is back after a virtual five-year
absence.

There hasn’t been much to laugh about in the business world since the
technology bubble burst in March 2000.

U.S. markets lost $10 trillion in value over the next three years as dotcom
after dotcom went bust and tens of thousands lost their jobs. Then came the
accounting scandals at Enron, Adelphia, Xerox Tyco and Worldcom, the
disgusting excesses and book-cooking that cost more jobs and rendered myriad
pension funds worthless. And then there was Martha Stewart, a
larger-than-life cult icon who was convicted of insider trading of ImClone
shares.

Sure, there have been the occasional Ken Lay and Dennis Koslowski jokes over
the past several years. But let’s face it: Scott Adams’s Dilbert and the
import of the U.K.’s “The Office” to America TV, the boardrooms and hallways
of America are just a couple of bright flowers on the fringes of this humor
desert. Workplace humor has been essentially verboten as Americans grieved
for lost jobs and depleted 401Ks.

It’s a pity. Americans spend so much time in the office – around 47 hours a
week, versus around 37 hours a week for the Swedes and 35 for the French -
they could use a laugh to lighten things up. Don’t take my word for it.
According to the Virtual Advisor, Inc. website ( www.va-interactive.com),
two studies confirm that “laughter is essential to a healthy and productive
workplace.”

More specifically, Virtual Advisor said a poll conducted by
WirthlinWorldwide, now part of the HarrisInteractive Group (and both part of
the growing crowd of companies that have lost the spaces between their first
and second names), showed 90% of those asked believed workplace humor helps
relieve stress. Also, 60% felt they’d be more productive if their employers
encouraged the use of humor.

Humor is something, if not strictly quantifiable, that experts like College
of William & Mary Professor John Morreall say makes for more satisfied
employees. And satisfied employees are ones more apt to be hardworking.

Laughter says “relax, you are among friends,” Morreall said at a conference
in Tuebingen, Germany earlier this year.

The tone of the office environment is most often set by the head of that
office. While no one’s suggesting your CEO should show up to work in red
honky nose and floppy clown shoes, having a boss who makes you laugh with
him – not just at him behind his back – makes the office environment a lot
more pleasant. It can also relieve stress and provide catharsis, though not
in the medical, chocolatey Ex-Lax sort of sense.

And Pennsylvania State University Professor John Sosik, who conducted one of
the studies cited by Virtual Advisor, found that humor helps employees
visualize concepts they might not have otherwise considered, leading to new
ideas and who knows, maybe even better earnings. In short, the suggestion is
that the use of humor by a boss “may help shape a creative and efficacious
workforce.”

So what’s funny? That’s a big problem in litigious, politically correct
America . What it means is before you make an ethnic joke, ask your
co-worker to pull your finger or roll out the sarcastic wit, remember that
your punchline could put you on the wrong end of a harassment or
discrimination lawsuit filed by a peeved coworker, or worse, on the
unemployment line. If you’re lucky, it will just get you punched. The
restricted range of subjects for joke-telling in the U.S. workplace ? jokes
about race, creed, color, sexual preference, religion or political
affiliation, anatomy and just about anything else personal – has also
stunted its development these past few years.

The best workplace humor is inclusive, making light of something just about
everybody finds annoying or stressful, like the Def Leppard song the UPS guy
is always whistling when he makes his deliveries in short pants. Or the
stapler that only seems to work when it’s stapling your hand to your desk.
Self-deprecations is also a good thing in moderation. “Yes, that’s me.
Handling hundred-million-dollar accounts, but unable to figure out the tip
at lunch.” Or remarking that Joe from accounting who had toilet paper stuck
to his shoe after leaving the bathroom was simply “trying to leave a paper
trail.”

The good news, at least anecdotally, is that more and more business-related
humor is creeping back into late-night comedians’ monologues.

Interspersed with “George W. Bush is stupid” jokes are gold nuggets from
Letterman on Martha Stewart’s new TV show (“Martha Stewart’s ‘Apprentice’
show premiered last night. I don’t wanna say it didn’t do well, but tonight
on his own ‘Apprentice’ show, Trump fired her!”), fraud at commodities
derivative firm Refco and the bankruptcy of several major U.S. airlines.

What it means is that the healing has begun after a very stressful and
destructive five years for American business.

Human resources consultant Dr. Joni Johnston notes that the average child
laughs 300 times a day. I don’t know how often the average adult worker
laughs each day, but if we can get it anywhere close to 300 times, we’re
probably talking about a pretty happy and productive worker operating in a
pleasant, stress-tolerant workplace.

And America is going to need a lot of that if it’s going to have a long,
sustained period of economic health.

(Adam Najberg is a financial journalist based in Germany. Kevin Reifler
lives in News Jersey and is the chief executive of niche marketing firms
LegalVoice and AccountingVoice. The two are coauthors of Stooples: Office
Tools for Hopeless Fools from St. Martin’s Press.)

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