Jokes at work

Positive Work habits and a good work ethic can start early in life with kids doing chores. I graduated from doing chores at home, to working in tobacco fields for family during the summer as a looper on top of a harvester, with my sisters. I remember Gene Howell standing and doing a pretend soft shoe dance at the front of the harvester, waiting for us to yell “stick” when our stick was looped full of tobacco, and then he would grab the stick and carry it to the back of the harvester and lay it down on the platform in a stack on top of other sticks of tobacco.

Sometimes the croppers below would send up a big old fat tobacco worm on the leaf and we would all scream…a great joke on us.
Gene would laugh too and made working in tobacco fun, as he would sing, dance, laugh and make sure we got our Mountain dew and nabs for break every morning at ten.
The sun would be beating down full force, mid morning, which was why it was a great time to break, and the water on the tobacco leaves that would slap us in the face with its stickiness would almost be evaporated by then. At noon Gene would drive us to his home and we would eat our lunches in the front yard while his wife prepared him a home cooked meal indoors with his children. Then it was back to the field for more looping. We got picked up at six am, and dropped off at six pm. and got paid daily, a dollar for every hour we worked. We thought we were rich.

After several years of that, I was old enough to train for a life-guarding job and I got hired at Seymour Johnson AFB as a lifeguard, for what I thought was a cushy job. But though the Air Force base life-guarding job was less physically demanding, it was still rigorously strict with sanitation and standards. The bathrooms had to be spotless, the pool water tested, the decks hosed off and the algae in any standing water had to be chlorinated and treated to prevent people from slipping. Most importantly, lifeguards could not socialize or slack off because we had to be constantly watching swimmers for any signs of hazards or life threatening events. Yes I had to save people, and though I hated Frank Pearsall, who practically drowned me during the WSI training I took before getting hired (at the community building pool) , I was grateful he was tough because I was a great lifeguard and became a WSI instructor myself as a result.

Then in college, I was so happy to be “free” do do what I wanted that I skipped all my classes, (except handball which I loved) and just played pool downstairs in the lobby of my dorm room, and got a GPA of .2 after which I had to come back home. It was stupid but at the time I did not think it was stupid, and I thought it was worth it. But I had to pay my parents rent for my room at home, and my dad helped me eventually get a job at the bank as a teller because he told me that it was ok to not go to college and maybe I just was not smart enough to get a degree. (reverse psychology)

The job at the bank was fun too. But it was not fun like working in tobacco or like working as a lifeguard. This job required me to act like an adult when I was really not an adult. I started college when I was underage so I was barely eighteen when I started working at the bank. I remember that there was a man in the mortgage loan department who was always eating peoples lunch without asking…and that was a problem. Everyone talked about it in break room. I remember in the break room, a lady I liked, Mrs. MacArthur, used to make cheese bread in the microwave and it always looked so yummy. She seemed to like me and I felt valued at that job.

The other tellers and I all laughed about the Senior lady (in charge at the bank of large withdrawals), as she had to sign anything greater than a thousand dollars, and all the tellers agreed that she never read the withdrawal slips, she just signed them. So one day, I wrote a withdrawal slip with a million dollars on it, and got her to sign it, and then wrote a poem about it and stuck it on the break room bulletin board along with the withdrawal slip. I thought it was a great joke but unfortunately bank management did not think it was funny and she got in trouble because of me.

I think about things like that and am astonished, as to how I could think that was funny, but back then it never occurred to me, that someone could get in trouble because of my silly joke. Another time, when I was working as a teachers assistant at a private school, and the main lady kept asking me to do things I did not want to do, I refused, particularly when she told me that I had to get in the pool with the kids but none of the other teachers wanted to get in the pool. This refusal, though done politely, put me on her “blank” list, and I ended up also writing her a poem in order to extended the olive branch of peace, (in the form of a jar of olive oil, also as a funny twist). She laughed but um yeah, she probably did not think it was funny like I did.

I am glad though, that back then I thought so many things were so funny, and now, when I am talking to little kids and trying to tell them something serious, I get it when they laugh at me, or do not want to listen. Neither did I at that age. My dad got me to listen by joking around with me and then telling me stories. That always got my attention.

Recently someone I know was called an “a..h…” at work and was screamed at and demeaned. It was definitely not a joke. Even when I was upset with people at work, I never wanted to scream at them or name call. I just usually walked away if I liked the job or quit if I did not like the job. I remember one job that was at a plant nursery, and I had to take flowers from one pot and put them in a bigger pot. That was the entire job. Lunch was when a large whistle rang and we were in a hot house for hours…and that whistle never rang. I had only been there three hours or so, but I just threw my gloves on the ground and walked out. There was not even anyone to talk to at that job and I never regretted leaving. But other jobs, in contrast, I have continued to love and continued to do, over the years, such as teaching kids to swim, working in journalism, and helping adults lose weight and connecting the dots. I was good at those jobs.

I think that in order for people to enjoy life, they need to love their job, and my dad used to say that if you love what you do, you will be good at it, and if you are good at it, you will be successful. He never thought that work should just be about the money. I agree, and I think one other thing that my dad also thought, was that work should be fun. I think that must be why I love watching baseball, because I love watching people who look like they love their job. Or I love watching my sons run races because I know they love the competition. I love watching my daughters home school or do gardening as well. I love watching mothers care for families.

At work, when people want to make other people use titles or special names, to me, it feels stifling and unnatural. That is not how anyone makes work fun or enjoyable in my opinion. If people cannot play jokes, and laugh, how is that an uplifting or fun work environment? People who are forced to use special titles and always be so dang serious, do not have enhanced relationships with their contemporaries as a result. We feel close to those we are free to tease and play jokes on. Mistakes are easily forgiven and the work goes on.

My sister recently told me that so many topics in the work environment are so contentious that many employees have a constant knot in their stomach as a result. Wow, just no! The world needs to change back to how it was when I had my first job, as jobs were fun and people were happy and felt like they were learning something useful and contributing to the world. I am praying for a healing of the world work environment, and know that healing will happen sooner than later because the natural abilities of our people are worth recognizing and exploring and productive people are how we will boost our economy…not fearful people or over regulated people.

I now write for free…and really do not care who does or does not read what I write and it is very liberating to me. I write things that are important to me, and then save them for myself to enjoy later on. I like seeing how my perspectives get fine tuned over time. And if I play a joke from time to time, or do something goofy or make a mistake, I hope someone laughs instead of getting mad lol.