In my friend’s telling (it was so long ago and comes from so far away that I can pass it on straight, without worrying about anonymity), a small group of colleagues were chatting about a supplier who several women found creepy. Part of his job was to check that his company’s service was meeting expectations, and he attacked this task with red-faced zeal. His ministrations went well beyond professional care and courtesy; they existed in a strange and disconcerting state between suffocatingly obsequious and shamelessly intrusive.
While listening to a woman’s example of the odd behaviour, another member of the team, placed a napkin on his arm, held a water bottle like a pepper grinder and asked the lamenting storyteller, “Would madame like freshly ground pepper on madame’s invoice?”
It was just the right joke, delivered with just the right props at just the right time. Everyone laughed hysterically. Then the joker did the bit again the next day. And the next. And the next.
The context was gone and all that was left was a long-faded memory of mirth. It became pathetic.
I remember my friend telling me that there were long and deep discussions outside the faux waiter’s earshot about what to do to end the delusion. Several people wanted to take what I think of as the schoolyard approach: stop him midway through a grind of the water bottle and assert firmly “That’s not funny anymore!” Heartless, damaging, but it would work.
But another idea won out. Someone in the team suggested that if they took away the items that made the joke possible, it would stop. Another said that this was true, but that “confiscating” them would be upsetting. She had an alternative.
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So one evening, when the over-enthusiastic pepper grinder had gone home, two members of the team created a shrine to “The Great Joke”. They placed it high on a cabinet, giving it an air of momentous significance, but also putting the bottle and the napkin, now relics, out of easy reach.
It worked. The joke stopped immediately.
Now, you don’t have props to remove, but I think the lesson here is as much about the good that can come from calm, reasoned and discreet problem-solving between team members as it is about the efficacy of taking away toys.
It’s also about the power of commemorating a “great moment” and the way that subtly imposes an end date on something that might have had an unlimited lifespan.
If these suggestions sound too specific, my more general advice would be, when coming up with a solution, to think creatively and err on the side of compassion.
Want to contact Work Therapy with a question? Email jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au
May 21, 2021 at 08:45AM
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That joke isn't funny any more - Brisbane Times
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Joke
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