Blog Post: Misinterpreting the Fish! Philosophy for "Having a Good Time."

The cover of the latest Utne Reader (one of those magazines for those of us who would subscribe to all the magazines in the world, and then let them pile up in a corner or two because we don’t have the time to read them) caught my eye with the title: “Your Boss Is Not Your MOM – How Work Turns Us Into Babies.”  With all the talk about how the Millennial generation needs constant rewarding to be motivated, and with the revelations coming from ASTD-OC’s Learning Executive panel discussion on January 30 that some basic job skills such as “showing up on time” need to be taught to the youngest of the new hires, I just had to turn straight to that article.

The actual article, titled Are We Having FUN Yet – The infantilization of corporate America, addressed the corporate world’s embracing of Fun as a core component of its culture. Matt Labash, the article’s author, points out a growing attention in various publications to this drive to making work a fun place to be, under the guise of teambuilding, improving motivation, or fixing morale.  He goes on to share the efforts of various corporations to establish a fun environment, even going so far as to hiring consultants with such names as “Fun Department,” and “Funsters.”

I won’t bore you with a retelling.  You can read the article online.

Of course, Are We Having FUN Yet shows some outlandish extremes to which companies stress fun over work.  But the effort to keep employees happy without content is prevalent throughout the business world.  I recall a former manager, whom I respect dearly, eagerly breaking out the pipe cleaners and aluminum foil whenever someone asked for a team building activity.  I’m a curmudgeon, so I stayed away from the actual event, though I’ve no doubt that the activity resulted in good, clean, fun, but no development.

I think this all started with Fish!  It probably started sooner, but Fish! was the first exposure I had to the having fun at work movement.  I still have the Play Book that we were given when we watched the Fish! video. The book states: “Any job can be boring if you make it boring. (and any job can be fun if you make it fun.)”  It asks: “What can you do to regenerate fun every day at your work place?”  Now, these are fine questions.  However, I would like to suggest that the answers to these questions are incorrect when we take them out of context. 

For those of you who don’t know the Fish! story, it focuses on the Pike Place Fish Shop in Seattle, where the workers there are definitely having fun, each day and every day, by throwing the fish the customers order.  There’s a guy up front who pulls whatever fish the customer points at and launches the fish to another employee behind the counter to wrap it up.  There’s a lot of banter, laughter, and teasing when someone drops a fish or makes a wild throw.  But here’s the point:  for all the fun they are having, they are still working.

This is a key point in the Fish! Play Book.  Right on page 5.  “You find ways of playing.  It doesn’t have to be throwing a fish.  In fact, you don’t have to throw ANYTHING!”

Absolutely right!

Then the book asks: “What other ways can you PLAY at work?”

When our managers challenged us to answer this question at my company, we really couldn’t find anything right off.  So we started throwing fish.  Stuffed fish, accessories of the Fish! Philosophy package.  Efforts to find fun at work failed, and we resorted to being drudges for a while.  The company tried again, this time with a team-building contest to make racing cars out of PVC piping and other accoutrements that brought to mind my childhood Erector set.  Fun, again, but what was the point?  How did it apply to my job, which is far, far away from racing, plumbing, and Erector sets?

These instances were few and far between at my company.  We still did a fair amount of work.  However, I know of other companies that have devoted so much time to team building activities that I’ve wondered when they ever get work done.

The critics of the fun movement in Are We Having FUN Yet? rightfully complain that the fun activities being arranged for them have nothing to do with work – a justifiable complaint.  These activities are great for water cooler discussion the next day, perhaps, but without the tie-in to work, there’s nothing to carry that emotion beyond 24 hours.

I don’t think work should be about fun.  I believe it should be about passion. Let’s revisit the folks at Pike Place Fish shop.  They are passionate about the customer experience. They do their banter, throw the fish, and everything else to make the customers’ day.  It’s not about having fun for fun’s sake, it’s about fulfilling a core component of their job – happy customers are return customers.

This is the hard part. I say often that I’m lucky to have found a job I’m passionate about.  I recognize that many people are not that lucky, especially in a corporate world that can be so easily aped in comic strips and sitcoms. 

But I pose to you this question: the employees in your company were hired because they, at one time, found an interest in the job they are doing over other jobs elsewhere in the world. Something drew them to it, be it Sales, Hospitality, Accountancy, etc. Is it not our job, be we managers or Organizational Developers, to help them reclaim that interest, if lost? And from there tie that rediscovery to a passion that drives them to come to work every day because work is fun, not the workplace?

Please.  Comment.  Let me know your thoughts.