Questions: If this piece didn’t mention The Office, would it still be brilliant?
Answer: Yes.
I’ve had a bit of a problem with “coercive fun” or, as I’ve called it, enforced jolility (I’m pretty sure that’s not a word, but it sounds like one) in the workplace. It seems to defeat the whole purpose, wastes time, and is generally stuff that I don’t enjoy. Still, it’s a big business, and Matt LaBash of the Weekly Standard has taken it on:

A considerable corpus of literature on their discipline is amassing. I use the word “literature” loosely, to mean a series of often ungrammatical double-spaced sentences put on paper, slapped between festively colored covers, and sold to mouth-readers with too much discretionary income. While most business books, according to Kihn, are written on about a 7th-grade level (there are exceptions like Who Moved My Cheese? for Teens that are written on a 5th-grade level), the funsultant literature regresses all the way back to primary school. Since we all forget to play as adults, as funsultants repeatedly tell us, they seem intent on speaking to us as though we’re children.

Their books are thick with instances of how successful businessmen keep things loosey-goosey at work. Forget industriousness, talent, and know-how–the wellspring of employees’ satisfaction, creativity, and prosperity is fun. In Mike Veeck’s Fun Is Good, the cofounder of Hooters Restaurants reveals, “I don’t know if we could’ve survived without humor,” whereas to the untrained eye it looked like Buffalo Chicken Strips served with large sides of waitress’s breasts were the secret to his success. Whatever. “Fun” is the cure-all for anything that ails your company.

If you thought there were only 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work, as suggested by the smash book that’s been translated into 10 languages, then you’re shortchanging yourself, because technically, there are 602 ways, according to the follow-up, 301 More Ways to Have Fun at Work. Using examples culled from real companies in real office parks throughout America, the authors suggest using fun as “an organizational strategy–a strategic weapon to achieve extraordinary results” by training your people to learn the “fun-damentals” so as “to create fun-atics” (most funsultants appear to be paid by the pun).

Here’s an abbreviated list of the jollity that will ensue at your place of business if you follow their advice: “joy lists,” koosh balls, office-chair relay races, marshmallow fights, funny caption contests, job interviews conducted in Groucho glasses or pajamas, wacky Olympics, memos by Frisbee, voicemails in cartoon-character voices, rap songs to convey what’s learned at leadership institutes, “breakathons,” bunny teeth, and asking job prospects to bring show and tell items such as “a stuffed Tigger doll symbolizing the interviewee’s energetic and upbeat attitude” or perhaps a “neon-pink mask and snorkel worn to demonstrate a sense of humor, self-deprecating nature, and sense of adventure.”

In the interest of not appearing to be a killjoy, I should disclose that I am adamantly pro fun-at-work, if by “fun at work” you mean “sending tasteless emails to friends,” “stockpiling office supplies,” and “leaving early.” And it is hard to argue with the salutary effects of enjoying yourself, even and especially at work. The medical literature, often brandished by funsultants, is unanimous on the health benefits of laughter (though nobody has yet looked into the possible detrimental effects of forced laughter brought on by leadership-institute raps).

Any Genesis subscriber knows that hard toil was originally conceived as a curse, God breaking the news to Adam that he’d be forced to stop lounging naked while snacking on fresh fruit, and that meals would now be served by the sweat of his brow. Mankind has pretty much looked for loopholes ever since. As you learn in Classics 101, the ancient Greek word for work was ponos derived from the same root as the Latin poena, meaning “sorrow.” Aristotle regarded work as a wasteful impediment to pursuing virtue. And the Romans were so work-averse that they outsourced all they could to slaves.

A good funsultant, however, doesn’t bill fun at the office as a cessation of work, but rather, casts the two as halves of a whole, what Leslie Yerkes, author of Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love To Work, calls a “Fun/Work Fusion .” How necessary or advisable is it for employers to facilitate fun, and how fun could the fun possibly be that they are facilitating? After all, plenty of surveys show that people are pretty good at fostering their own fun at work and yet still remain a largely unsatisfied lot. (For all employer nods to serving as cruise directors on the Funship Lollipop, a Conference Board survey reports that fewer than half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 60 percent 20 years ago.)

PREVIEW: Are We Having Fun Yet?

The whole point of work is that it’s work. While it’s great to have a job that you can be passionate about, often people just do what they have to for a paycheck. Lifeson and Lee said it best:

I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin
Yes, Im workin all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess thats why they call me
They call me the workin man

There’s been a real change in American culture. Go back and read Steinbeck–people drove hundreds of miles just for a chance at working a dismal, low-paying job. Now, people seem to feel entitled to not just a well-paying job, but one with “funtivities.”

You want a funtivity? Here’s your funtivity: have a contest where the most productive employee (by whatever standard you use) gets two days paid vacation, plus a $100 stipend to do something fun. I imagine that productivity would go up much higher than if you’d paid outside funsultants to come in and stage a water-balloon fight.

But I guess concepts like “most productive” and “winner” are too harsh for today’s workplace, because then there are also less productive losers who have to endure the shame of…working for two days with full pay while their colleague is out carousing.

Speaking of productivity, I should probably get back to setting up this lottery/casino revenue comparison I’m setting up, so I’ve got to curtail my opining and get back to the brutal work of elementary statistical analysis.

Well, I’m in one of my periodic “I’m tired of writing about gambling issues” moods now. I want to see how long I can go before giving in and writing a post about casino expansion or new technology or something.

Instead of blogging about Massachusetts casino prospects or lottery revenues today, I’m going to share a link to some writing that I really, really enjoyed. This excerpt will give you a taste of the travails of a community theater critic. From The Smart Set:

They eased me gradually into the job. For the first assignment I was sent to Center Stage, Baltimore’s regional theatre, to watch Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. I got free tickets, they gave me press packets and, on opening night, they gave me cheap champagne. I came home, dissected the play, summed it up, listed three good things about the production and one bad thing, and ragged on one actor. I was the Frank Rich of Baltimore, and I hurled my bolts of insight from the mountaintop: If you like your Shakespeare straight up and easily pegged, the Bard’s later plays can be problematic. I could offer veiled criticism: The main characters are a little less fiery than one might expect. And I could always end with a bang: This is the late Shakespeare, who pleases some, tries all, and doesn’t really care if you walk away a little confused.

Just when I thought I had the job down, I ran out of professional theater to review — which, in Baltimore, doesn’t take long. But I kept getting assignments from the City Paper, and I noticed some funny things happening. The ticket prices started plummeting. I didn’t need to make reservations. The audiences were getting smaller. The people in the seats were getting older. The theaters were harder to find. And the actors weren’t necessarily bad, but, well, let’s just say they stuck to their day jobs. I had quickly spiraled down through Baltimore’s few examples of semi-pro theater. And minor-league theater. And, because it was the only place to find more shows, I ended up at theater in the rough.

The Smart Set: Confessions of a Community Theater Critic – September 11, 2007

I challenge you a) not to click through and read the entire article and b) not seriously contemplate attending some community theater. For that matter, maybe you, like me, will wonder just where an ordinary American can sign up to become a roving community theater critic, earning $55 a pop for mildly praising the thespian efforts of local would-be actors.