First of all, no disrespect to whom this may fall on; most people don’t like to be called clowns but that’s what they are really; the jolly good fellow who lights up a room and eases up the tension in an already pressurized work-place.
Are you the office clown in your work-place? You might have some perks here and there. Everyone would love to hang around you; everyone loves a person with a great sense of humour.
Because you are so approachable, people would come to you for advice or to seek your opinion on various matters. Thus, you gradually become an integral part of your organization. Everyone wants to work in your team and you would tend to have a lot of friends. If you are single, you just never know where your spouse could come from!
The boss would recognize that you are a jolly person to work with, especially if you are a very enthusiastic about your job and the organization as a whole. And if you are the boss, with that much humour, the entire team of the company would be at ease every time which would most likely lead to better productivity.
But, just like everything else in life, there are the down sides. People would take you for granted and would not take you seriously almost all the time, especially if you are the boss. That very thin line between you clowning around and you giving out instructions would be crossed, almost always.
Office clowns tend to become bullies. Hold on, let me explain: when you start making funny remarks and offensive comments about your fellow co-workers, people would laugh because, hey, it’s funny, but you are hurting someone with those jokes. In this instance, the ideal thing to do for the person at the receiving end of the joke is to approach the clown and talk things over with him/her.
On your side, as the clown, it would be wise to tone down on the hurtful remarks no matter how funny, you do not want to go around making enemies, do you?
While we love to laugh, sometimes office clowns could be a source of distraction to the business at hand: making jokes while a tough executive meeting is going on would be inappropriate.
Just like every other person, the office clown has his/her own bad day too; days when he/she may be withdrawn and less chatty. While we may miss the life and sound of laughter that they bring, this is when we have to reach out to them and help out the way we can and give them a little bit of time and space to recharge and come back with more jokes and banter.
Life is tough enough already as it is, a little bit of humour now and then is much appreciated and that’s why we love our office clowns, or dislike, as the case may be.
Vivian Ifekwem
PA to CEO, Mediacraft Associates
