This Could Destroy the World!
Yesterday in the office I sometimes swan into when I’m not working from home, there was much hilarity. Loud guffaws of laughter were heard. Screams of mirth were piercing the air. At points it was startlingly loud. Clearly someone visiting the office was a bit of a joker, a character, or a “good laugh”.
At one point the laughter that erupted from the office this bloke was in was so uproarious that it prompted one of my colleagues to say this:
“Bloody Hell, that’s not even a corporate laugh. That’s an actual laugh”
I thought my friend’s comment was funny. So I laughed. A real laugh; not a corporate laugh.
I’ve been thinking about corporate laughing ever since. The social and business oil of the corporate laugh is a powerful force. The forced or fake laughing at the joke or the comment that someone makes, even though you don’t find it particularly funny, in order to make life go smoother, is the Castrol GTX of the global business machine.
I wonder what would happen if one day we all decided not to do the corporate laugh?
What would happen if everyone, one day, didn’t laugh at the lame comments a workmate makes about their weekend exploits, but instead just looked at them silently?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t laugh at all, but only genuine situations of hilarity should get any response.
A typical day would also involve not laughing at meetings or presentations where the boss tells a funny story to get everyone on board with something, makes remarks about fellow workmates, or generally just tries to show what a wag he is. Unless any of this was genuinely funny. Which in 99% of cases, it wouldn’t be.
We could widen the definition to extend to social occasions. For example, hopeful boyfriends meeting the girl’s parents for the first time would be banned from doing the corporate laugh. If the meeting of Dad-in-Law-To-Be fell on “No Corporate Laughing Day” they’d be screwed as they’d have to look Daddio unsmilingly in the eye as he tells all his mother-in-law jokes and expects a captive and generous audience in the form of the suck up future son in law who wants full approval.
Excepting the office of Gordon Brown which I’m guessing sees little in the way of joshing, the political machine would seize up. All that forced laughter and barracking in the House of Commons would cease and some actual progress might be made. Similarly the ass kissing laughter of the minions during a golf game with George Bush would result in shockwaves of indifference leaving the ego of the President battered, forcing him to do God Knows What.
Would all business deals fall flat? Would “office pranksters” find themselves facing a wall of silence provoking a crisis of self doubt? Would the psyche of the corporate drone be irrevocably damaged causing most of them to cease to function? Would the social grease of the day be wiped away, make us all anxious, disorientated and even angry?
Maybe even then I’m understating it: would a global war break out within one day of the no corporate laughing embargo???
Let’s try it and see what happens!
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I am ruder than the French: it’s official.
What they do to rude people in France….possibly.
British people always bang on about the French being rude. Especially the English contingent.
As far as I can tell this is due to the following reasons:
- These people haven’t been to Germany yet
- British folk are rightly jealous of the fact that the French have Paris as their capital city, so have to find flaws elsewhere.
- British folk think they French should have tried a wee bit harder in the war, but they can’t say that out loud, so they condemn them as being rude and unwashed instead.
- British folk hear French being spoken, don’t understand it, and assume they are being talked about.
- That whole British Beef thing is still upsetting some folk. If the French had been more polite they would have shoved that BSE contaminated meat down their throats with nary a complaint and to hell with the health consequences!
- And that whole winning-the-World Cup-thing-on-home-ground-more- recently-than-100-years-ago thing? Well, that really stings. How rude of them to be better than us* and then rub it our face at every opportunity. We’d NEVER do that!
To be honest, I thought the French people I came into contact with couldn’t have been nicer. I went the whole weekend with nothing but a feeling that me and the Frenchies I came across were reinforcing that historic Auld Alliance that exists between Scotland and France with great aplomb.
Until five minutes before departure from their country, that is….
A verbatim account follows in which you are allowed to make up your own mind.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury…
Scene: Misssy, feverishly late from a three minute mile dash, manages to check in as the last passenger from Paris C.D.G to Aberdeen. She has 15 minutes to make it through passport control and security. She is bathed in sweat and very aware that her Apex ticket will be meaningless dust should she miss this flight. As she joins the queue in Passport Control, she realises there are about sixty people before her. They all seem to be British. She turns to two girls (who she assumes are British)
Misssy: Scuse me, have you got the time?
The girls just stare at her. Misssy thinks they haven’t understood her and that they must be French. Misssy doesn’t speak French. So she points to her wrist indicating the international sign language for, “Have you got the time?”
Misssy: Time?
1st French girl: Yes, I understood you.
After staring at Misssy for a further couple of seconds, the girl reluctantly shows her watch to Misssy.
Misssy: Oh 3 o’clock. Oh dear (sigh) …thanks.
Misssy’s plane leaves in under 10 minutes.
The French girls stare daggers at Misssy and make noises to one another that suggest they are unhappy. And that Misssy has caused this unhappiness.
Misssy: I’m sorry. Is there a problem?
1st French girl: Yes, there is. You could have at least said “please” and “thank you”.
Misssy: Oh! I did. I said thanks.
1st FG: Well, I didn’t hear you.
Misssy: No, I really did. I appreciate you telling me the time. I did say thanks. I thank you again.
Both girls snort like they don’t believe what they are being told.
Misssy (embarrassed and trying to make a joke): A blow for international relations then?
The French girls are further put out by this remark. Everybody in the queue stares.
The French girls decide to try another queue and leave.
One can only hope that these girls are headed for London where their sensitivity towards the finer points of etiquette will get a good old straining. May they take the wrong tube and end up in deepest Hackney by mistake. There’s some real rude boys around there…
* I exclude the Scots in this. We’re just happy to be still invited to try out for the World Cup.
Tales of the Cite
Sarkozy makes an “honest woman”
of Carla Bruni on Saturday 2nd Feb
(I don’t know if they waited until I could make it across)
“Ohh!Ohh! and then I saw the Eiffel Tower and screamed out loud, and then I saw the Seine and shrieked like a little girl, and then I turned to the left and there was the Champs Elysees! And Notre Dame! I cried with joy when I saw the Louvre! And then…” and so on.
You can go to Paris and do that yourself. And I defy you not to react like I did, for it is the most wonderful, jam packed, beautiful city. All you need to know is that I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Paris. I had a grin permanently plastered on my face all weekend and will go back at the earliest opportunity.
Instead, I want to tell you some of the things I promised in my last post.
J’ suck at le Francais
I was a real languagey person at school, but I did German and Spanish instead of French, just to be difficult. As a result my French is based on stuff gleaned from French movies, the songs of Serge Gainsbourg and the obvious “get-you-by” stuff. I hate not being able to have a stab at getting through the day in the native language. It fills me with horror that I am tarred with the same brush as British people who steadfastly refuse to grant their hosts the courtesy of giving their language a go.So I did try. I managed to order a couple of things, got my Metro 3 day pass with no problems (I promptly got on the wrong train, but let’s gloss over that) and was able to meet and greet in the most perfunctory but sing-song of ways. I wished
I could have been better at it.I can only apologise to France as a whole, right here, for the way I desecrated their mother tongue. But be assured of this Frenchies, I resolve to learn more and return with an accent that would make Charles De Gaulle himself proud.
I love my friends
Not the sort of romantic love you associate with the City of Light, but I do; I love them. The whole Paris trip was an attempt to meet up to celebrate 21 years of friendship.
Despite the fact that the three of us haven’t been together for ten years as a complete party of three, and we all live in different countries, we never had one awkward silence, one cross word or one second when we weren’t having a big old whopper of a time.
Every hour or so one of us would exclaim, ” I can’t believe we managed to get this together”. And in Paris too. It just doesn’t get any better than that. We have resolved to do it on a regular basis.
The patented and inevitable Misssy travel nightmare story
What follows is a catalog of errors involving my trip home which I will outline in verse:Oh Misssy M, why didn’t you,
Remember into which terminal you flew?
And why didn’t you get on the airport bus,
Instead of having one last girlie fuss?
And why didn’t you find out in advance,
That your check in desk was on the other side of France,
To the one that you were on, when the bus driver let you go,
Requiring you to run the length of Charles De Gaulle like Flo-Jo?
Next installment: I try to leave Paris and my etiquette is questioned
