Someone on LinkedIn brought up having fun at work as a team building exercise or creative breakout type of thing.
Their point was that sometimes we need to bust up the monotony. Things like a trip outdoors, I don’t know, some sort of creative activity that has nothing to do with your actual work tasks. That kind of thing. It’s supposed to spark productivity, or so some say.
I want to address this as the workplace curmudgeon. I say this while giggling. I’m not a total stoic. But I am a partial stoic.
The person in the LinkedIn post brought up the concept of a do-nothing day at work. Wait. So you telling me I have to get up for work, do my morning routine, get dressed appropriately, and then show up to work and we’re not actually doing anything?
What are we there for, then?
Gotta tell ya. If this is an in-person workplace and you’re telling me that today is a do-nothing day, or some kind of field trip? I’m going to be annoyed.
Yes, I know I’m in the minority. But if I’m at work, I want to be working. I can go home and have fun on my own time. But if I’m stuck here, I want to be getting things done. Not frolicking or singing Kumbaya.
I am not in favor of the blending of work with fun culture. A lot of what I do in my profession, I naturally find fun because I delight in writing and editing, including even the most boring content that no one would want to touch. But when you cross the boundaries into my personal habits by having me do non-work-related fun things on the job, I don’t like it.
Thinking about this some more. Even if I worked in a customer service capacity, I still wouldn’t want to stop what I was supposed to be doing to “have fun” at work.
Listen. A lot of us are not into this rah-rah culture. I don’t need color-coded folders and an animated cute little character popping up in the corner of my computer. I told you, straight curmudgeon.
Whenever they had those workplace fun activities at my corporate job, I dreaded them. Because why? Oh, right, because we were at work.
How am I supposed to be working and getting things done if you’re dragging me away telling me to have fun on command?
I don’t want to play baseball with my coworkers. I don’t want the fitness equipment to be located inside the fabulous work campus so that everyone knows I’m over there huffing and puffing on the treadmill on lunch or whatever.
(Not that anyone would do that… if you have 45 minutes to eat lunch, who has time to hop on a treadmill and then shower on their lunch break,?… but anyway.)
This is just me. Maybe I’m stoic. But I don’t want to socialize or do frivolity that has nothing to do with work tasks, on company time.
Don’t want to color in a coloring book or decorate my cubicle instead of working. Don’t want to make smoothies or plant garden seeds or have a recipe contest with my coworkers.
If we decide that we are friends and we’d like to hang out outside of work hours, that’s a different story. And we can do that. Definitely! And I’ll be fun. I’ll crack jokes and whatnot. You’ll love it. I’ll crack jokes at work too, just as long as I can continue working while I’m doing it.
So, no. I don’t want a day of nothing at work. If it’s going to be a day of nothing, I’d like to go home and do nothing in my own personal environment. 😊
Thanks for listening. I work from home anyway so this doesn’t matter in my case, but it was fun to comment on.
Yes, I remember those “fun” corporate activities. The whole time, I just wanted to be finishing up my work. The deadlines are not going to move or go away. So why are we frolicking again? There’s work to do.
I’m here to work!