“I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.”
Kevin Hart, comedian
I love the kind of laughter that creeps up on you and erupts in a moment when you absolutely should not laugh.
Like when you’re ten years old, sitting in church and watching a person across the aisle nodding off, slowly slumping sideways – and suddenly their glasses slip off their nose. The abrupt waking up, the scramble to catch the glasses, and the attempt to make it all look very dignified… that’s just hilarious. (It happened to a friend. Wink wink.)
Seriously though, bursting into uncontrollable laughter is one of my favorite things. I love laughing until my face hurts and tears stream down my face – the kind of laughter that renders you incapable of doing anything but laugh. I mean, who doesn’t like that?
Please Join Us!
What: #MTtalk
Where: Twitter
When: November 4 @ 1 p.m. ET (5 p.m. BST / 10:30 p.m. IST)
Topic: Hilarious Career Moments
Host: @Mind_Tools
The Spit Take
Early in my career as a membership consultant at a health and fitness group, I attended an awards function. It was a morning event and, while waiting to enter the venue, we stood around, drank coffee, and chatted.
A few of us were standing in a circle when my colleague, Herman, began telling a joke. One sentence into the joke, the CEO joined our group and stood opposite me. As I took a sip of my coffee, Herman delivered the punchline – and it was truly hilarious.
I instantly did a “spit take.” In other words, I spewed coffee all over myself, the CEO, and everybody within striking distance. To make matters worse, I laugh-snorted, and with coffee streaming out my nose and tears running down my cheeks I tried to apologize.
This, of course, was drowned out by the raucous laughter coming out of doubled-over bodies in our little circle and from everybody around us!
We tried to clean up as best we could, but minutes later I appeared on stage to receive an award from the CEO. (Yes, the same one I’d just baptized with coffee.) He was very generous about the whole thing. After handing over my award, he pointed to our coffee-stained clothes and quipped, “Yes, we were together – and the evidence shows that we had our clothes on.” Laughter seeped into every corner of that room – and pretty much the rest of the function.
From that day, when one of my colleagues started telling a joke, someone would invariably ask, “Where’s Yolande?” or, “Is she busy drinking?”
Clowning Around
Mind Tools coach Mike Barzacchini remembers a hilarious career moment that led to an office tradition.
“I once arrived at work with mismatched shoes. One brown. One black. Instead of dismay, I turned this into our first office mismatch day! Of course, when asked about my clashing shoes, I responded, ‘What do you mean? I have another pair at home just like them!'”
Mike’s wife, Susan, once hired a singing clown and a person in a chicken suit for a surprise birthday serenade in his office while his team looked on. The singing of “Happy Birthday” concluded with the chicken cracking a confetti-filled plastic egg on his head. He said that the entire office loved his birthday surprise and they laughed about it for weeks.
He says there’s a moral to both stories: “Being the punchline of the joke, especially if you’re the manager, can boost morale, lighten the mood, and bring the laughs. Don’t fear the funny!”
Recruitment Gone Wrong
In her early HR career, Sarah Harvey was responsible for administering a busy recruitment process.
“One day I was on an interview panel with two very serious engineers,” Sarah remembers. “I collected the interviewee, Joe, from reception, chatting to him informally before showing him to the room and introducing him to the panel.
“The interview started with an introductory chat around his application and CV, and questions about his current job. As the questions and answers continued, the panel began to look more and more confused. The answers given seemed very odd compared to the information on the CV.
“As things progressed, it became clear that the person in front of us didn’t have the experience or skills for the role we were recruiting for. I started to feel a bit sick and uncomfortable as it dawned on me what must have happened.
“Eventually the Chair of the panel interrupted the interview and said something like, ‘Can I just check, your name is Joe Bloggs? And you’ve come for the role of Highways Superintendent?’
“Silence and confused looks from everyone. ‘No’ said the interviewee. ‘My name is Joe Smith and I’ve applied for the role of Accounts Assistant.’ Oh heck! I’d only muddled up two recruitment processes and invited the wrong Joe to the wrong interview!
“As a young, inexperienced but ambitious HR Assistant, I couldn’t have been more grateful for the way everyone took this news. Thankfully, everyone laughed. Of course, I apologized profusely for my mistake. There was no real harm done, apart from my damaged pride and a wasted half hour interviewing someone for a job they shouldn’t have been invited to.
“All’s well that ends well. The right people got invited to the right interviews in the end. My relationships with the two managers were intact, and I went on to work with them successfully for many years – and we had many more laughs along the way. However, I never invited the wrong person to an interview ever again!”
Beware the Bear Lady
Another of our coaches, Zala Bricelj, recounts a funny story from her past career as an English teacher.
“At the start of my career, I worked for a program that facilitated English lessons for kindergarten children aged three to six.
“In my first week, I traveled around with a huge teddy bear that was the size of a small child. It was my childhood teddy bear and a gift from my late grandmother.
“In one of the kindergartens, a child was talking to his parents in the hall when he pointed to me and said, ‘Look, that’s our English teacher!’ The parents looked at him and me and asked, ‘What’s her name?’ The boy stopped, looked a bit confused and embarrassed, and then finally said, in a low voice, ‘It’s the Bear Lady.’
“We all laughed out loud, and I quickly introduced myself to the confused-looking parents, explaining that I’d brought a big teddy bear to their son’s class.
“Over the years, I often thought back to that moment when the going got tough. The experience taught me how impressionable children are, how much small details mean to them, and how interestingly their minds work! It was definitely a year full of laughter and learning for me (and them).”
Hilarious Career Moments – Join the Chat
Early in my career, one of my managers often said that a person who learns to laugh at themselves will never cease to have a source of entertainment.
In our upcoming #MTtalk Twitter chat we’re going to talk and laugh about your most hilarious career moments – what you learned from them, and how humor can help us get through tough situations. So come and join in the fun, and share your thoughts and hilarious career experiences!
In our Twitter poll this week, we wanted to know what you think is the biggest benefit of humor in the workplace. More than 40 percent of participants voted for “a happy office mood,” while only five percent felt it defuses tense situations. See all the poll options and results here.
If you’re thinking of joining in the chat, take a look at the following questions to help spark your thoughts and ideas:
- What’s the funniest thing that has ever happened to you at work?
- How could a hilarious career moment go wrong?
- How does humor/laughter benefit us?
- Do you think humor can improve the workplace? Or is it a distraction?
- What’s one lesson from your humorous career/workplace experiences that you’d like to share?
- How can you help yourself and others to see the humor in situations?
Useful Resources About Humor at Work
To help you prepare for the chat, we’ve compiled a list of resources for you to browse. (Note that you’ll need to be a Mind Tools Club or Corporate member to see all of the resources in full.)
How to Join the Twitter Chat
Follow us on Twitter to make sure that you don’t miss out on any of the action this Friday! We’ll be tweeting out ten questions during our hour-long chat.
To participate in the chat, type #MTtalk in the Twitter search function. Then, click on “Latest” and you’ll be able to follow the live chat feed.
You can join in the chat by using the hashtag #MTtalk in your responses.
The post Hilarious Career Moments – Join Our Twitter Chat appeared first on Mind Tools Blog.
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