MY VISION OF 2005 AND LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2006 #3

2005: In 2005, I took two vacations; one for personal reasons and one for a family function. The one for personal reasons was not fun. The one for a family function (which I dread) turned out to be one of the best times I had doing it. At one point, I turned to my wife and told her that this was the best trip to see her family that I have ever had. That's right it was a trip to my wife's cousin's wedding. We packed the kids and got onto an big orange and red big and then we were free to roam about the country (HINT, HINT)

In 2005, I know of one individual who took a vacation by himself, his wife took a vacation by herself, and their kids took their own vacation. Wow must be nice to get away from the kids and I bet it is. Come on, how much fun can you have without the kids?

Well if you are shallow you can have a pretty decent time, maybe close to fun, however, I assure you that there will be NO JOY in what you are doing and where you are doing it. As a matter of fact I would call it INSANE. Where is the fun in being insane? Truly I believe that it is actually a lot of work to be insane, convincing everyone you are insane.

But I digress, Mr. Vacation Example, owns his own business. He has quite a large staff who get paid at various levels, depending on the position within his organization. It would be safe to say that over 98% of his staff could not afford to own a Mazda Miata or two or three for that matter. Well, I was shocked when I saw that he openly flaunted his "single man" vacation to his staff. Most of which are single parents or sole providers for their family unit would never even dream about taking a vacation let alone a vacation without the family.

I fully understand that it is good to be the boss, but to openly rub it in the faces of the people who look to you for a job and most of all, a paycheck, is not a good thing for morale. When bad things happen to company morale, well that just isn't a fun place to work at.

2006: In 2006, I will do what I can to advocate that fun be brought back into the workplace. If you are not prepared to have some fun, then you are not really prepared to have productive employees.

Please do not get me wrong. I am all for getting to work and making things happen in the workplace. However, if there isn't some laughter in the workplace, then that is a place that is waiting to implode because I guarantee all you will find there is dissent. Do something before you find yourself with a high turnover rate that leave you with an "old timer" in your organization as having an average of 18 months time with your organization is definitely not my definition of fun.