Workplace Horseplay Stumbles

If your 401(k) is top heavy with stock in whoopeecushion.com, we have three words of advice for you: sell, sell, sell. If your desk drawer is stocked with plastic flowers that squirt water at innocent petal-sniffers, clean it out. And if your idea of a rib-tickling good time is to filch a colleague’s car keys and switch station settings on her radio, resist.

The office prank--that time-honored, camaraderie-building psychological release valve in workplaces everywhere--has, many say, undergone dramatic downsizing.

“They’re endangered,” said Wally Glenn, whose Web site (www.gwally.com) is devoted to harmless but creative workplace pranks. “Workplaces are boring. The only place to have fun used to be the dot-com--and that died too.”

Because of security concerns in the post-Sept. 11 world, a vigilance exacerbated by numerous incidents of threats and realities of anthrax-tainted mail, offices are tense places these days. Other factors, say some observers, are tough times and layoffs in the high-tech field, a realm in which the practical joke had been elevated to an art form.

Nobody, it seems, is finding much to laugh at in the office these days. And while anthrax-related pranks aren’t funny in anyone’s book, more lighthearted pranks also may be feeling the heat of the new seriousness in the workplace.

Harmless high jinks, which previously might have elicited little more than an admonishing frown from a stick-in-the-mud supervisor, now result in abrupt dismissals.

Last week, three veteran writers for USA Today were fired for what most observers probably would consider a silly joke. The staffers used their fingers to write their names and “Kilroy Was Here” in what they assumed was dust on a new sculpture--a big blue globe--at Gannett Co.’s headquarters at Tysons Corner, Va.

The boss, USA Today President Tom Curley, wasn’t amused and axed Karen Allen, Denise Tom and Cheryl Phillips. The dust, according to published sources, actually was a pigment to which a sealant later was to be applied. The trio’s apologies and offers to pay for any damages to the work, and even the sculptor’s pleadings with USA Today management to reconsider the firings, were to no avail.

“The danger is that we tend to make being foolish into a crime,” said Gary Fine, sociology professor at Northwestern University. “Since we’re all foolish and we’ve all done things that are embarrassing or stupid, we’re all at risk.”

The man who created the Dilbert comic strip, the quintessential exploration of workplace absurdity, also fears the advent of a less frolicsome office. “The phrase ‘humorless workplace’ is a redundancy,” says Scott Adams.

Like a volatile stock, workplace humor has risen and fallen in popularity many times over, Adams and others recall. In the 1950s, a serious, button-down style was favored by managers and, whether they liked it or not, by employees; things grew looser and less formal in the offices of the 1960s. Similarly, the focused, intense, no-nonsense style of the 1980s gave way to the casual cool of the dot-com workplace in the 1990s.

But before things relaxed again in the 1990s, workers were kept on a short leash, Adams said. “In the early days of ‘Dilbert,’ before it became--if I can say this--an icon, I got reports of people who were fired for posting it on the wall or sending it to the boss.”

Then came the prosperity of the tech boom, and workplace pranks were all the rage again. At places such as Sun Microsystems, jokes became as elaborately planned--and sometimes as expensive--as Broadway musicals. In a single night, Sun employees once installed a golf course in a boss’ office. Another time, they took apart a boss’ car and reassembled it inside his office--and filled the car’s interior with baby sharks.

Now the wheel seems to have turned once more. Rough economic times, coupled with the nervousness engendered by Sept. 11 and a still-lingering apprehension over offending a colleague on racial, gender or ethnic grounds, have conspired to create a “joy-free workplace,” in Jeff Borden’s description of some contemporary offices.

“Nobody wants to stick their foot into the thicket of political correctness,” says Borden, an assistant managing editor of Crain’s Chicago Business. “Society is far more litigious. There’s a far greater burden on employers to prove that they’ve created a workplace comfortable for all. What used to pass for horseplay has fallen by the wayside--and I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.”

Fine, however, believes that pranks--even those in question--are too important to banish. “Pranks, including the anthrax ones, institute a community. It’s a feeling of, ‘Not just are we working together--we share a culture. We’re a family.’ I’ve studied a number of workplaces, from Little League teams to restaurant kitchens, and when they’re working well, people create a culture that extends beyond a workplace culture.”

Practical jokes “add to the texture of life at work,” Fine added. “They create an internal cohesion. Yet workplaces have become more constrained.” Sept. 11 “ratcheted up the anxiety people feel. The kind of freedom that perhaps we’d been able to take for granted on Sept. 10 is no longer taken for granted. How long this will last is anyone’s guess, but there will be repercussions for at least a generation.”

But would anybody find an anthrax joke funny? Would anybody have laughed at the employee of a Seattle TV station who poured crushed Life Savers into an envelope and put “Anthrax, Fla.” as the return address?

Maybe, Fine said. “It’s humor of the absurd. You can see where he thought it would be humorous. It’s poking fun at our fear.” Moreover, Fine said, the hapless TV station employee was surely not alone. “I have no doubt there were a lot of people who did that, and most got away with it. A few unfortunate people did it with people who were not amused.”

Workplace pranks have a long and storied history, from tricks such as putting copying machine toner on a phone earpiece to appropriating a boss’ stationery to send angry missives to employees.

Staffers of outgoing presidential administrations are famous for playing practical jokes on their successors; these mild diversions only became an issue when members of the current Bush administration complained that Clinton administration staffers had been wantonly destructive.

Only later was it revealed that members of the first Bush administration had pulled similar tricks on incoming Clinton staffers.

Jason Roth, whose Web site (www.savethehumans.com) includes dozens of suggestions for workplace pranks, was similarly concerned about the future of on-the-job fun.

“In my experience, there are a lot of things people are afraid to say. But pranks are good for the company, as long as nobody gets hurt. They liven up the day. You can’t have a sterile environment. Employees should have a good time being there.”

If they have too good a time, however, they may not be staying there for long.

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ulia Keller is a writer for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune company.