Will There Be Funny Hats?

“The world of work is in flux, with a fight for our time and our livelihoods at the centre,” Elle Hunt writes in the Guardian today, “Fun doesn’t seem to factor into it – but [management consultant] Bree Groff argues that it should.”

Should it though?

Already I’m rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of finding some vomit-making suggestions for workplace “fun” for my fellow misanthropes here in the blog. Surely they will involve Lego, team-building exercises, safe-for-work “humour,” maybe some funny hats.

what if work was neither our only source of meaning, nor a necessary evil to be endured – but a “nice way to spend our days”?

I’m listening.

It was a shock, when Groff entered the working world herself, to find it weighed down by so much baggage: back-to-back meetings, no time for bathroom or meal breaks, emails at all hours and busy work with no obvious point. The trouble is not so much work itself, Groff says, but all the “patently ridiculous, if not outright dangerous” trappings and norms that come with it – chief among them the expectation that it may come at the expense of sleep, relationships or wellbeing.

Correct.

We get paid to create value, not to suffer, Groff points out.

INCORRECT. Many managers and employers get off on human suffering. A certain kind of person is attracted to the managerial role. They are usually self-important power-tripping idiots with nothing finer in their lives than trapping their “inferiors” and watching them age. Beyond managers and employers, it’s also ideological.

“We’ve normalised this idea that work is just drudgery and we do it because we have to,” says Groff.

I’m not sure that’s true. New Escapologist and the Idler promote the idea that work is all to often drudgery, but we’re quite rarefied voices in a world where most people either enjoy their work because they don’t see an alternative way to sp[end 80,000 hours before dying or, if they hate it, they pretend to enjoy it because it’s “for the kids” or whatever bad faith argument they’re into that week. Or because they want to maximise their consumer privileges. Or because they don’t want to seem ungrateful.

Fun is a good metric [of workplace quality] because it’s hard to force, or fake. Instead of trying to lure workers back to the office with free lunches, employers could consider what it feels like to spend time there, says Groff. “Are people – especially the leaders – relaxed and happy and joking? Is it a fun place to be, or is everybody just in meeting rooms in their button-downs all day?”

The problem is: we’re paid to be there. And we’re there because we have rent to pay. We can’t laugh and joke with the people who own our time and knowingly have the power to ruin our lives with a simple “due to corporate restructuring, we have decided not to renew your contract” letter. Unless you’re genuinely committed to creating a non-hierarchical workplace (presumably a cooperative where everyone takes home the same wage and has an equal voice in the organisation’s direction of travel), the power imbalance is an insurmountable problem. Colleagues are not your friends. That’s why “colleague” is a word really. You can’t be yourself at work. And if you can’t be yourself — if you’re working under a reign of low-level fear — you can’t really have fun.

You can’t even really have much fun with colleagues on the same level. They’re just as embarrassed to be there as you are. They’d rather get through the day in dignified silence and then, as early as possible, go home to where real life happens.

As to “luring” workers back to the office from their post-pandemic WFH situations, why do want to do that at all when you know it’s more expensive and less productive? Is it because you’re a self-important bastard who wants to see disciplined bums on ergonomic seats between 9 and 5 no matter how little sense that makes? It is because you love Pret?

Anyway, I’m still waiting to hear about Groff’s idea of workplace fun. Come on. I want specifics. Will there be funny hats?

Groff uses the example of Peter Attia, a Stanford-educated surgeon who went through a period of playing clips from the cult film Napoleon Dynamite while performing various transplants.

Ahahahaha! Better than I could have hoped.

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New Escapologist Issue 18 can be ordered today for prompt shipping in early November.