When you sit on the internet for long periods of time (a la yours truly), you look at people’s attitudes towards each other and you wonder where things went wrong. Spend some time looking at the mainstream media, and it becomes really apparent: society thinks you should be miserable.

Don’t believe me? Think about your workplace. For most of us, the focus is just on the wrong stuff, especially in the customer service world. If employees are treated like human beings, the quality of customer service is greatly increased. A happy worker will treat customers with a fantastic demeanor. If you hate your job, it shows through.

On weekends, I bartend for a little extra scratch at a local hotel. On my first Saturday shift, I worked from 11:00am until about 4:00pm. Now, especially with nothing going on in Milwaukee this particular weekend, it was dead. As a doornail. I mean, I went about two hours with no customers whatsoever. I was told by one of the managers that, when the bar is empty, I can sit at the bar and watch the big TV on the wall, just as long as I jump up when a customer walks in. Seemed like a great idea. I sat down and started relaxing my feet a little bit.

About ten minutes later, the other manager on duty walked past me and ordered me to get up and stand on the other side of the bar. Then he walked away. No reason given. No explanation. I stood around, craning my neck to see the TV and pass the time for another 45 minutes before a customer walked in.

Is it necessary to insist that customers think you were standing for the last 3 hours, waiting for them to come in? Is it supposed to make you look:

• Stupid for standing around.
• “Superhuman” for your endurance.
• So dedicated to making their Jack-and-Coke that you’re willing to stand in one spot for hours on end until they come in.

If not, then what’s the point? At the end of the day, the customer will buy the same amount, tip the same amount, and be just as happy. I’ve worked several customer service jobs, from bank teller to waiter to cashier, and I’ve never met a customer that cared what I did when they weren’t around. In fact, if they saw that I was having fun with my coworkers, but dropped it the second they walked up so that I could help them, they almost always laughed and discussed the activity with us.

See, everybody’s human, and everybody needs to have a good time at some point. As long as work is getting done, why not enjoy yourself a little bit? What is this obsession with breaking down people that are just trying to have a laugh? Are we not allowed to have fun until we are 65 years old? I value hard work as much as anybody, but there’s no sense in making it worse just because you feel like you have to. And in the age of political correctness, everybody’s got to be offended by something.

Case #1: The Milwaukee Brewers

On Sunday afternoon, I was watching my Brewers play the San Francisco Giants. It was pretty unremarkable for a while – the Brewers are wayyyy out of playoff contention, and after a great spring, they tanked. It’s been a big bummer for us Brewer fans. But we crept into the bottom of the 12th inning, and Prince Fielder belts out a walk-off home run. It’s a fun moment, and the crowd goes wild (and so do we!). As Fielder rounds second base, he points the dugout, and the players line up in a half-circle around home plate, awaiting Prince’s entry so they can celebrate. Then what follows is a pretty funny celebration. Observe:

Now, we thought it was hilarious. But as I watched ESPN today, every freaking pundit and show was debating this little act. The Giants pitcher went on ESPN Radio and complained about how disrespectful it was. On “Around The Horn”, one guy was saying that it was a ridiculous celebration because they’ve played so poor. Since they were losing a lot, they weren’t allowed to enjoy a rare dramatic win, apparently.

How ludicrous is this? Disrespectful? Did they get into Giants players’ faces? Did they moon them or something and we missed it? It looked like a bunch of kids playing baseball and having a good time to me. I would say the Brewers’ recent woes mean it’s okay to celebrate some good news for a change! People who are complaining about this have clearly forgotten what it was like to play a hard-fought baseball game with their buddies. If you ask me, it’s poor sportsmanship to walk around complaining about how the other team celebrated that they won.

Case #2: The Zero-Hour Work Week

I think you all know Jonathan Mead from Illuminated Mind. I reviewed his ebook, “Reclaim Your Dreams”, a couple weeks ago. He’s topped himself with his new, FREE ebook that he released yesterday, entitled, “The Zero-Hour Work Week”, a play on Tim Ferriss’ “Four-Hour Work Week”. Click on the link to download it.

Jonathan’s case – and I agree – is that we are conditioned to think that we can only be miserable, and then retire. The problem with this thinking is that it cripples you into limiting what you do. The subconscious mind is a horrible demon if it’s conditioned improperly. If you tell yourself you’ll never be able to do something, you never will be able to do it.

Obviously, you have to eat, and you need a roof over
your head. And you have to have a source of income
to pay for it. The problem arises when you realize that
everyone else has an idea of what you should be doing
with your time. In other words: if you don’t choose a
purpose, someone else probably has one for you.

So true. And the biggest problem is that nobody knows what you’ll enjoy more than you. If you are working a miserable job to stay afloat while you pursue your dreams, that’s one thing, but if your career is sucking the life out of you and giving you nothing back (see Office Space for further details), then what’s the point?

The Value of Having Fun

Okay, what does this all have in common? Fun.

Life is short. Heck, 4 people from my high school graduating class are already dead, and it’s only been six years. You never know when life is going to be taken from you. I’m not saying ditch all hard work and only do stuff that’s fun. I’m not saying life should all be about sitting on the beach sipping goofy drinks with umbrellas sticking out of them. I am saying that your life is too short to purposely allow yourself to be miserable all the time.

An often-repeated quote is “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. Are you doing that? Are you reporting to that office every day, going home, eating crap food and going to bed early, constantly thinking about how you wish things were different? You need to grab life by its, well you know, and start doing something about it! Here’s why:

1. It’ll make you a more pleasant person to be around.
2. You will strengthen yourself – you never know how strong you are until you accomplish something you set out to do.
3. Your outlook on life will improve, rather than getting crushed by the weight of the world.
4. You’ll be more productive – when your brain is relaxed, it can concentrate and focus better.

So let’s do it: block out a little time every day to do something strictly for fun. Play a silly game on the computer. Rock out to a few tunes and play that air guitar. Putz around on YouTube – I recommend Lonely Island for mindless entertainment. Forget about what people will think. This is about you for a change. Find that passion in your life, whatever it may be, and pursue it. Work some fun back into your life. We’re not stiffs in suits here. We’re human beings. Don’t forget that.

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