The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Silly

Wallow in silliness here

  • Banksy: The Bear And The Bee

    Banksy - the bear and the beeThe anonymous british street artist Banksy made a hilarious piece on the side of a trash container in Notting Hill, that is highly relevant to happiness at work. The text is a parody of a La Fontaine fable and goes like this:

    “Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass.

    When Winter came the Bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself ‘I hope that busy little Bee will share some of his honey with me’. But the Bee was nowhere to be found – he had died of a stress induced coronary disease”.

    There’s a larger picture of it here.

  • Appetite lost in translation

    Yesterday my wonderful girlfriend suggested crab chowder for dinner. We found a great recipe a few years ago by british TV chef Ainsley Harriott which quickly became one of our favorites. Ainsley is a man who is very obviously happy at work – as you can probably tell by looking here.

    We Googled our way to a danish version of the recipe… which had lost a little something in the translation though:

    Chowder

    And no, that’s not the danish spelling of crab chowder :o)

  • Ze Frank on happiness

    This just in: Ze Frank is forced to explore happiness on The Show all this week.

    Hilarious :o)

  • Friday weirdness

    Happy catWhy not inject some random acts of weirdness into your friday? Here are some ideas:

    Find out where your boss shops and buy exactly the same outfits. Always wear them one day after your boss does. (This is especially effective if your boss is a different gender than you are.)

    Send email to the rest of the company telling them what you’re doing. For example “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the bathroom.”

    Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say “Just called to say I can’t talk right now. Bye”.

    When someone hands you a piece of paper, finger it, and whisper huskily, “Mmmmmmm, that feels soooooo good!”.

    Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

    Walk sideways to the photocopier.

    While riding an elevator, gasp dramatically every time the doors open.

    When driving colleagues around insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions “to keep ’em tuned up.”

    Staple papers in the middle of the page.

    As much as possible, skip rather than walk.

    Wear a hands free phone headset throughout once in a while drift off into an unrelated conversation, such as: ‘I don’t care if there are no dwarfs, just get the show done!’

    Source

  • Is THAT what I loook like when I speak?

    Me?

    No wonder people are always laughing at my presentations :o)

    This was taken at EuroGEL by Gene Driskell who besides being a great photographer is also an amazingly nice person, so I can’t even blame him, dammit! Check out Gene’s pictures from EuroGEL – they’re that good.

  • More complaining

    All of this talk about complaining reminds of the old joke about a man from Eastern Germany who had applied for permission to emigrate to Western Germany. He was interviewed by a government official who couldn’t quite understand why he would want to move.

    “Why exactly do you want to move to the west. You have a nice appartment…”

    “I can’t complain.”

    “And you finally received that car you’ve been applying for.”

    “I can’t complain.”

    “And you have a nice job at the shoe factory.”

    “I can’t complain.”

    “So why do you want to move to the west?”

    “Because there I can complain.”

  • How to recieve praise

    Yaaaaay!I’ve been getting a lot of amazingly nice praise recently, which has .given me a chance to practice receiving praise gracefully.

    I use a method that helps me avoid some common mistakes in receiving praise:

    • Don’t explain the praise away – as in “Aaww, it was nothing special”
    • Don’t reject the praise – as in “You don’t need to thank me, I was just doing my job”
    • Don’t ignore the praise – as in “How about them Dodgers!”

    Remember when people take time out to praise you or something you’ve done, it’s nice to accept the praise in the spirit it’s given.

    I recommend this 2-step process for receiving praise:

    1. Shut up
    2. Say “Thank you!”

    Step 3, jumping up and down, pumping your fist in the air while yelling “I’m the MAN!” is optional and should probably be avoided in many situations.

  • Dilbert: “Reduce employee turnover… Check!”

    Today’s Dilbert strip is pretty funny :o)

  • Best damn newsletter around

    You can make co-workers and employees happy at work – but you can also try to make customers a little happier. And don’t you think that will keep them coming back?

    Zopa is a new kind of bank that lets you lend money to or borrow directly from other people. That’s cool but it’s not the only reason I admire them. I also admire them for their funny, irreverent, different newsletters like this one:

    We try to be completely open with our members, but chances are there are still some things you don’t know about us yet. So rather than leaving you in the dark, we thought we’d fill you in on 10 things you might not know about Zopa:

    1. Lenders earn 3.25% interest from the minute we receive their money until the moment it gets lent out
    2. You can lend as little as £10 – so it’s really easy to dip your toe in the water and see what it’s like
    3. Rather unfortunately, in Russian ‘Zopa’ means ‘bottom’
    4. Lenders are protected against fraud – so if a borrower borrows fraudulently and then defaults, or if someone hacks into your account, then you won’t lose out
    5. The Zopa Member Services Team is on hand 7 days a week, and is only ever an email away (contactus@zopa.com)
    6. People from the north tend to pronounce Zopa to rhyme with ‘hopper’, people from the south, to rhyme with ‘hoper’
    7. You can transfer money into Zopa using your debit card – ring 0207 636 7712 during office hours (Monday to Friday, 10am – 6pm)
    8. Our bad debt levels currently stand at less than 0.05% across all markets
    9. By offering in many markets at once, your money will get lent out quicker and so will work a lot harder for you
    10. There is no official Zopa handshake. Yet.

    This is a great way to make you customers a little happier – and it’s great branding that helps underscore the fact that Zopa is not a traditional bank.

  • Buzzwords galore

    Clue meterOver at jobster.com you can see what it’s like to work for different companies, including this little gem:

    What’s unique about working at Mark Pembrooke?

    Coaching executives and using Six Sigma and Lean tools to empower individuals/teams to develop synergism within an organization, and distinction from the competition.

    Riiiight. The clue-meter is reading zero but the buzzword-o-meter is in the red :o)

    UPDATE: In fact, it was my clue-meter that was reading zero. It was a joke on the site and I totally failed to get it :o) I blame the unusually hot weather in Denmark right now and the fact that after spending two hours in the sun engrossed in Let My People Surf by Yvon Chouinard I’ve now got a tan on one side of my face only. Improperly balanced melanin will do that to you.