How to be Jollier on the Job

Do you hate your job? Resent your boss? Are you counting the hours (or shirking your responsibilities and reading blogs like this one) until you can punch the clock and just go home?

Let me share with you a few simple ways to rekindle your work passion. You could invest in a high-grade, fully automatic espresso machine for your cubicle. You could fly around to all your meetings with a jet pack. Or you could be more helpful at work.

I’ll warrant that last idea is, by far, the cheapest.

There’s even a term for this: “office altruism.” It’s when you take time to help your colleague polish her big presentation. You offer to proofread your co-worker’s grant proposal. You wash the communal dishes in the lunchroom. Whichever way you do it, apparently, you’ll end up happier on the job.

That’s what researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison claimed in a paper. They shared evidence that people who put a higher priority on helping others in the workplace were happier decades later.

What does that mean for someone like me, I wonder, who works in an office of one – and a home office, at that? Does it count that I occasionally crouch over my dozing dog and charitably give her a fine belly rub? It certainly lifts my spirits when I do. And she seems to like it.

Hmm, I think I’ve stumbled on an interesting new research direction for the folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison…

She’s downright euphoric. Must be a mighty helpful person around the call centre. (stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Building Bonds

Two good-news stories, both involving tall buildings, stood out last week. What has a skyscraper got to do with sweetness, you might ask? For one thing, it might lead to a baby raccoon getting stranded on – and later saved from – a window ledge high above the ground. This happened at the downtown Toronto Star building, so not only was the rescue witnessed by a crowd of newspaper workers, it was also diligently recorded and reported. The baby raccoon had been up there for a couple of days, unable to get down, so firefighters set up a long ladder and basket to try and help the trapped animal.

Although the first reports all referred to the animal as a “he,” it was later found that the raccoon was actually female. (You’d think newspaper staff, of all people, would have their facts straight. Sheesh!) The Toronto Star folks did show their creative side by naming her Scoop. And not, we presume, just because she was safely scooped up in a net.

Eight thousand kilometres south of here, an act of kindness was happening outside another high-rise structure. As Reuters reports, window washers at the Sabara Children’s Hospital in Sao Paolo, Brazil, decided to cheer up sick children by wearing superhero costumes while they worked. Instead of staring at a dull, grey cityscape when they looked out the window, the kids caught glimpses of Batman, The Flash and Spiderman industriously applying their squeegees. A smiling nine-year-old told Reuters: “There is nothing to do in the hospital and, with these activities, a child’s day is happier.” (Truth be told, a smiling nine-year-old hospital patient could say anything and I’d quote her here.)

These buildings may be made of hard concrete, but last week they were the settings for some pretty soft-hearted good deeds. (See what I did, there?)

If you look really closely, you’ll see a cute little sick kid waving from the tenth-floor window… No, not really. (FreeImages.com/pazham)

Getting It Write

I was drawn to a recent interview in The Guardian featuring American novelist Ann Patchett – and not just because I like her books (three for three, so far). It was because, according to the article, Ann Patchett dwells on doing good. As you all know, ideas like these get my antenna up. Apparently, when Ann is writing, she cogitates on the fundamental human drive to be nice to others, and incorporates that into her captivating plots.

“I have been shown so much kindness in my life, so for me to write books about good, kind people seems completely natural,” she told the journalist. She added: “When people say, ‘Oh it’s too nice, it’s naive,’ I just think: who killed your mother?”

So then, last week, when the local school offered up two tickets to hear Ann speak at our downtown library and read from her newest book… well, they had me at hello. I wasn’t disappointed. Of course, every event seems worthwhile when it includes a cash bar. But Ann’s presentation was also engaging and interesting, and surprisingly hilarious.

I particularly enjoyed her comments about passing the age of 50. She’d felt as though a giant switch had been flipped overnight, she told us joyously. Suddenly, you no longer care. What she meant was that you stop worrying about what others think of you. “I know I’m a good person,” she assured us. It sounds liberating, doesn’t it?

There weren’t many males in our audience of 500-plus. During the Q-and-A session, though, the first person to approach the mike was an earnest young man who attempted to clarify the point Ann had just raised. “My question for you is about aging,” he said. “I’m almost 30. Do you recommend I stop caring now?”

Like I said, it was entertaining.

Thank you, Ann, for reminding us that most of us are fundamentally good, and that that’s good enough.

Photo by Heidi Ross / courtesy of HarperCollins

Passing the Smell Test

If a guy pulling a pop can off the face of a skunk with his bare hands doesn’t attract attention, I don’t know what would. Sure enough, Ontario’s Mike MacMillan has been fielding dozens of media interviews since posting his skunk-rescue video, “The Bravest Thing I’ve Ever Done,” on YouTube last week. We all silently root for Mike as we watch him cautiously approach the poor skunk, murmuring, “Please don’t spray me… please don’t be upset,” filming with one hand while he reaches out with the other.

What you don’t know from watching the video is that he was smartly outfitted at the time. “I was on my way to meet the mayor of Barrie for a meeting,” says Mike, whose company makes secular, science-based animations and illustrations. “I was dressed in a suit, and not ready to wrestle a skunk!” But he couldn’t turn away, especially after he saw another car come close to running it over. “That’s not a dignified way to die,” says the animal lover. “I had to deal with it.”

Mike is scared of skunks – tell me, who isn’t? – but he valiantly crept close. Once he was able to grip the can, he and the animal worked together to pry it off. Then came the moment of truth. The skunk pulled free, and for a few seconds, he and Mike stared each other down. Would Mike get anointed for his efforts? When I pointed out that getting sprayed would have made it less of a feel-good story, Mike disagreed: “Actually, I think it would have been better! Either way, it was going to be entertaining.”

Was it awkward to assist a skunk and film a video at the same time? “A few people commented that I could have done a better job with a free hand,” Mike says, but confesses: “If I did have a free hand, I would have been using it to protect my face!”

It’s quite a story. But our stinky little friend is not the first of its kind to get its head caught in a can or a cup, nor is Mike the first person to film a rescue and put it up on YouTube. I found at least six more video clips, including a paramedic who puts on a biohazard suit before approaching the skunk, a man who hilariously plays instant frozen statue while the newly freed skunk sniffs his shoe, and a group of dauntless women who don’t give up even after the skunk sprays a little bit. You all have my deep respect. If you want, you can also have my soap.

This is the face of a brave man. (Photo courtesy of Mike MacMillan)

…And this is the face of a skunk: unobstructed, the way nature intended. (FreeImages.com/Torli Roberts)