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I barely know what to do with this...
Imagine you're working in a cubicle at your place of business. Imagine you're a hard worker...people call you tireless...they say you have a reputation of "work, work, work."
It's a Friday afternoon. The bustle of hustle is all around you...everyone is working with one eye on the clock and one eye on the door. Of course that leaves no eye for work, but-hey-it's a Friday and the weekend's a comin'.
You're flailing at the scattered papers in front of you. Let's say it's a risk management audit you're working on. The numbers are little and the statistics are micro. You're in your itty bitty little audit world...you focus...and suddenly...without warning...you're dead. You slump forward...you rest your forehead like a big fleshy paperweight on the surface of your desk, and you are dead. Dead.
And nobody notices...
Your co-workers (well, ex-coworkers now since you are dead) scramble all around you to finish what they gotta finish. Some slip out early. Their minds, of course, are on getting away from that place for a couple of days. Maybe they say goodbye to you, but you say nothing in return. Possibly they leave impressed with your level of focus and dedication.
They turn the lights out when they leave...and you're dead. You spend the night at your cubicle...dead. The sun comes up the next morning and you're dead.
Then someone enters to do some work on Saturday morning, they see you at your cubicle and marvel at your stick-to-it-iveness...but you're dead.
You seem a little quiet. Maybe it seems odd to them that you haven't changed your clothes since the day before. Maybe you look a little pale. They say "Hi" to you, but you give them the cold shoulder. Finally, they get curious, walk over and poke you only to find that...you guessed it...you are dead.
This actually happened a few months ago to a Los Angeles County employee named Rebecca Wells. She died at her desk working on a risk management audit during work on a Friday afternoon and was not noticed until Saturday.
Now I know there is always a fine line between how much employees should be allowed to socialize and mingle during work hours. Some bosses want to stamp out every bit of non-work activity. And far be it from me to waste time with too much silliness.
But some kibitzing can actually be really good for morale and team camaraderie. As long as it is not overdone and it's not gossip, it can actually produce greater motivation and cooperation; thus greater effort, speed and productivity.
There is one rule of thumb, though, that I would adopt from this story. That is if people are dying at work and we're not noticing, then we can be pretty sure that we're not socializing enough and our team camaraderie is probably not where we want it to be.
Of course, if you work in a morgue, ignore everything I just said.
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