Work should be fun

[Baron von Lotsov]

Someone warned me about designing websites and customers in our area.



An Italian girl who I chat with called me tonight. She's an actress, and you'd think that was pretty fun, but today she told me she had to be at work at 6am tomorrow morning!!! What's worse is it is outside and they are supposed to be filming a scene where the people need to wear "summer clothes".

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

Lots of jobs sound fun but it would take a special kind of person to find any job 'fun' all the time.  Fun is not the same thing as job satisfaction - some people doing fairly unpleasant jobs still seem to derive job satisfaction from doing the job well, helping people, making use of their skills, earning a lot of money or a combination of those things.



Think of various jobs that sound quite fun:  . . .



Collecting and delivering prestige cars for rich customers - yes, but all day, every day, whatever the weather?



Designing websites - yes but what about the tough deadlines, tricky customers and problems that are beyond your control?

[papasmurf]

I'd love to tell you, but I'd have to shoot you.

Lifetime restriction on visiting some countries?

[GregB]

I'd love to tell you, but I'd have to shoot you.

Oh milk man then  

[Barry]

And what was your job Barry ?

I'd love to tell you, but I'd have to shoot you.

[GregB]

My main job, which I did for 20 years I really loved. It was like being on holiday I enjoyed it so much.

I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie and in the end it did for me, so I had to give it up. Nice while it lasted and I loved the responsibility and decision making under pressure.

And what was your job Barry ?

[Barry]

My main job, which I did for 20 years I really loved. It was like being on holiday I enjoyed it so much.

I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie and in the end it did for me, so I had to give it up. Nice while it lasted and I loved the responsibility and decision making under pressure.

[Baron von Lotsov]

I enjoyed most of my working life it was interesting different and so where many of the people I worked with who were funny and good at their work, to do something you enjoy and get paid for is brilliant

That's exactly what I find with myself. I found myself struggling with many issues, but the joy of knocking continually buggy issues on the head for good was very satisfying. I enjoy challenges, so I'm trying to think up a good challenge. My current view is it really comes down to imagining the future. It's not what is happening now, but what will happen which I think is where you need to look. For example, there is no point in setting up a traditional engineering firm if the future of engineering will be antonymous machines. You have to design to solve problems that are not current problems but will be later on! This is the fun of it.

[Churchill]

My work was great fun.

My wife is still working not an easy job and long shifts but she enjoys it the team she works with are great

[Baron von Lotsov]

I do not expect it would be fun working as the chap's secretary.



You see something odd happened to the economy once he launched his Arbeit Macht Frei initiative.



The financial analysts reported excellent figures. One of the key figures on the country's economic performance is the unemployment rate, and this dropped very fast indeed. It was so fast that it was unexpectedly good news for the City. The issue was a no-brainer. More work being done means more industrial output and the ultimate objective of making the country wealthy. Even those on the side of the poor could see that a poor country simply can't help the poor because it would not have the cash in the first place, so any gestures would be academic.



The problem with that is only visible if we do a plot of the log of real GDP vs time. Such a graph for any economy should look like a straight line, because every year technology provides about 2% of real growth to any industrialised economy. You can do a plot of the US economy from 1890 to the current time and see a dead straight line bar a small blip in 2008. The same is roughly true for the UK economy except for blips in WW2, but in exactly the time IDS was rolling out his agenda our real GDP stops increasing at this long-term rate. it's as if we are frozen in time and not progressing at all. It's a kind of anti-correlation to what the expected result would be if we just use the unemployment reduction effect on an otherwise continuing long term trend.



The main difference between before IDS and after him was the move from rather than looking for a job you would like to do, you must instead take any job on offer. I think what we have are more people in work,but  more of those hate their job, and because they do they are substantially less productive than those before them who had the choice in which job they were to do. Like to give you an example, say you went into a shop and the girl on the till was hating every minute of being forced to serve customers. You might find yourself less keen on that shop.

[T00ts]

My work was great fun.

[Churchill]

Here's a little story. One year I got a lift to Glastonbury Festival in a circus van. Everyone else had complimentary tickets, but I did not, because there were only so many. The ticket price was still steep in those days, and equivalent to a couple of day's work for many. I had a nifty idea though. In my luggage was a huge stash of beer, because before going, I visited the cash and carry. Beer in there was about 2/3 of the price it was in a shop.



We pitched up in the children's field, and after 11pm at night all the children's entertainment stuff had finished. What our van was, was the Zapperelli travelling circus. So it was like "roll up roll up" kind of thing, "Get your beer here chaps." We were all well off our heads and decided to pretend were were circus clowns dong a beer selling circus act, since all the officials had gone to bed. That was the punchline! The beer stock vanished in little over ten minutes and it was sad we then had to turn the rest away.



So there moral of that story is there are often more ways than one to crack a nut. Nearly everyone there had probably had to do two days of hard graft to buy their ticket, and I did it in ten minutes whilst having a laugh.



The other day I saw this job ad on the computer which started off, we believe in having fun. All our work we do is orientated in  this direction, so that's how we  make decisions. It was like a kind of preamble to the job offer.



What do do you say to that?



Is your work fun?



Do you try and make it fun?



What happens when you are working and having fun? Does it make more or less cash?

I enjoyed most of my working life it was interesting different and so where many of the people I worked with who were funny and good at their work, to do something you enjoy and get paid for is brilliant

[papasmurf]

Work fun. You must be joking, if it was fun it would be called play.



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[Baron von Lotsov]

Here's a little story. One year I got a lift to Glastonbury Festival in a circus van. Everyone else had complimentary tickets, but I did not, because there were only so many. The ticket price was still steep in those days, and equivalent to a couple of day's work for many. I had a nifty idea though. In my luggage was a huge stash of beer, because before going, I visited the cash and carry. Beer in there was about 2/3 of the price it was in a shop.



We pitched up in the children's field, and after 11pm at night all the children's entertainment stuff had finished. What our van was, was the Zapperelli travelling circus. So it was like "roll up roll up" kind of thing, "Get your beer here chaps." We were all well off our heads and decided to pretend were were circus clowns dong a beer selling circus act, since all the officials had gone to bed. That was the punchline! The beer stock vanished in little over ten minutes and it was sad we then had to turn the rest away.



So there moral of that story is there are often more ways than one to crack a nut. Nearly everyone there had probably had to do two days of hard graft to buy their ticket, and I did it in ten minutes whilst having a laugh.



The other day I saw this job ad on the computer which started off, we believe in having fun. All our work we do is orientated in  this direction, so that's how we  make decisions. It was like a kind of preamble to the job offer.



What do do you say to that?



Is your work fun?



Do you try and make it fun?



What happens when you are working and having fun? Does it make more or less cash?