The end of 'careers', Humour at work
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Identity and work: Laurie Taylor explores selfhood in an era in which our working lives are becoming increasingly uncertain. He talks to Jesse Potter, lecturer in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University and author of a new study which interviewed people who'd undergone profound work-life changes. How do individuals achieve meaning and fulfilment when their productive lives fail to satisfy? Also, Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor of Strategic Management at City University London considers how employees use humour to cope with paradox and change.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much, |
| 0:06.2 | much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:12.4 | Hello, Happy new year. |
| 0:14.0 | Your usual? |
| 0:15.0 | said the young woman behind the machine when I walked into my local coffee bar at 830 this morning. |
| 0:20.0 | Oh yes, I said yes, yes, and a happy new year to you you're back to the grind she asked through a his of steam |
| 0:27.4 | Yeah, oh yes I nodded yes back to the grind someone has to do it. |
| 0:36.0 | Exactly she said with a mock weariness. Little jokes about the burden of work are as stock in trade as complaints about the weather. |
| 0:41.0 | And until a few years ago much of this humour was generated in the actual |
| 0:44.6 | workplace. On an average day in the past I might expect at least one bogus phone call from someone |
| 0:50.0 | pretending to be senior management. John Bird here, could you pop into my office, |
| 0:54.4 | ASAP? Or I might find a mock program proposal on my desk. |
| 0:59.6 | Lori, I wonder if you'd be interested in presenting a six-part radio four series on the last man lighthouse in the UK? |
| 1:05.2 | Or some joker would send me the top-floor cafeteria's dish of the day, grilled tanduri hake with merrello cherries but this was this was strictly |
| 1:15.4 | humour among employees the way of beating off the exigences of work of not to be too |
| 1:20.6 | pompous about it of asserting personal identity against the anonymity of corporate management. |
| 1:26.0 | Hardly surprising then that there was nothing that could so violate this state of affairs than a manager, |
| 1:31.1 | a boss, who decided to make themselves the source of humour rather than its |
| 1:36.2 | butt. |
| 1:37.2 | When you laugh, your brain releases endorphins, yeah? |
| 1:41.0 | Your stress hormones are reduced and the oxygen supply to your blood is increased. |
| 1:46.1 | I try and laugh several times a day just because it makes you feel good. |
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