Pause for thought before office silliness, but not for long
On my way to my desk the other day I popped into the office of a colleague, grabbed some documents from his desk, stapled them to the leaves of the plant next to his chair, scrawled "I love Pascal Lamy" across his copy of Inside Trade and started composing a suitably humiliating e-mail at his computer. But as my cursor hovered over SEND, something unusual happened: I wondered whether my behaviour was entirely appropriate.
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I say "unusual" because I have been behaving in this distinctly un-FT way for years. But weighing on my mind recently has been a meeting with an old friend who, in relation to a disastrous but nevertheless, in my view, hilarious prank I played at school, remarked: "God, you were such a moron then." Having always found myself incredibly amusing, the comment took me aback and made me wonder whether my predilection for office pranks might be similarly moronic.
Sifting through newspaper cuttings for advice, I didn't find much in the way of consolation, only tales of caution: a story about a security guard in the US who died of a heart attack after being "kidnapped" by co-workers, a story about a joke that went fatally wrong at a Merrill Lynch office party in New Zealand when someone's grass skirt was set on fire while he was in a toilet cubicle.
Meanwhile, the little advice dished out specifically on the subject of office pranks was uniformly disapproving. People who insist on larking around in the workplace label themselves "lowbrow, possessing a lampshade- on-the-head sensibility", wrote one commentator in a US newspaper. Most office pranks are "aggressive and will likely serve to instil a negative work environment", wrote another.
But eventually, as I trawled further back, one piece of faintly reassuring evidence emerged: some research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Management in 1999 concluding that "humour enhances individual and team performance" - albeit with the caveat that "the impact of humour depends on who is using it - transformational leaders use it to positive effect but laissez-faire bosses [can cause] damage by trying to be funny".
As ever with academia, this is a long way of saying something simple. What they mean is: office humour is a funny - as in peculiar - thing. It is impossible to generalise about it in the same way that it is impossible to explain why some people are in hysterics when a colleague sets their stapler in jelly, while others find it as amusing as the Wall Street Journal. In short, carrying out an office prank successfully is more difficult than sending a man into space.
Of course, the safest thing to do would be never to be silly. But then, in my view, being silly is the one of the things that makes working life tolerable. I would even go as far as saying that the question of whether to prank or not to prank evokes the most profound dilemma of corporate life, one that confronts us the moment we turn up on our first day: how much do we dare to be individual in the face of pressure to conform?
After some deliberation I have concluded that it is good to prank. But before you tape down the button on a colleague's phone so that it continues to ring after it is answered, or leave a message for the boss to call Mr Lyon, next to a number for the local zoo, it is worthwhile reminding yourself of some basic truths about workplace humour.
(1) People are rarely as funny as they think they are.
(2) Comedy is subjective and cruel - no joke appeals to everyone and nearly every joke has a victim. Before you go ahead with any prank, you should ask yourself: can my victim take a joke?
(3) Comedy is all about timing. Something your target might find amusing when he/she hasn't got much on, might not be as as hilarious when he/she has a deadline to meet. Also, if you are pranking more often than you go to the loo, there's a problem: you are an irritant.
(4) It is never a good idea to carry out a practical joke that will affect an entire company or a large department. Everyone has a different sense of humour, and a proportion are bound to consider you a moron. Be focused.
(5) Bear in mind the nationality of those you are targeting. I am informed that the Japanese have a preference for visual gags - wigs etc - while Germans, apparently, rarely consider levity at work appropriate.
(6) Bear in mind your profession. In medicine anything short of a human hand in someone's drawer is not considered funny, whereas in law anything more than a whoopee cushion is seen as outrageous.
However, there are two scenarios in which none of the aforementioned qualifications apply. The first is when your intended target is someone who attended an English public school. Given that a significant proportion of their education will have involved them being taunted with jolly japes, it is almost always OK to play a prank on them. They can take it. Indeed, some of them can only communicate through wind-ups.
And then there is the situation where you have yourself just been the subject of a practical joke. If someone has scrawled phallic symbols across your copy of Heat and sent a message to your boss from your PC, volunteering to do work that youhad no intention of doing, I wouldsay it is quite permissible for youto act in revenge. At least this is why, in the end, I clicked SEND without any guilt whatsoever.
把握办公室搞笑的分寸
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一天，当我走向自己的办公桌时，我快速跑进一位同事的办公室，从他桌上抓起一些文件，钉在其座椅旁边的一株植物的叶子上，然后在其《内部交易》(Inside Trade)文件的副本上写下“我爱帕斯卡?拉米(Pascal Lamy)”的字样。接着我开始在其电脑上杜撰一封足具羞辱性的电子邮件。但当光标移动至 “发送”按钮时，不同寻常的事情发生了：我在考虑我的行为是否完全合适。
我说 “不同寻常”的原因是，多年以来，我一直在做着这种与《金融时报》风格明显不符的举动。但最近与一位老友的会面令我深感忧虑。在谈及我上学时一次灾难性但我认为非常有趣的玩笑时，他说：“上帝啊，你那时可真愚蠢。”我一直认为我自己非常有趣，他的此番言论让我吃惊不小，这让我反思自己对办公室玩笑的偏好是否同样愚蠢。
为了寻找这方面的建议，我仔细阅读了各种报章，但没有找到多少足以令我宽慰的文章，只有一些以示警告的故事：一个故事讲，美国一位保安在被其同事“绑架”后，突发心脏病去逝；另外一个故事称，美林公司(Merrill Lynch)在新西兰举行的一个同事聚会上，一个玩笑造成了致命的后果：某人在如厕时，其身穿的草裙被人点燃。
与此同时，专门谈及办公室恶作剧的建议很少，且都持反对态度。美国一份报纸的一位评论员写道，那些坚持在办公室中制造恶作剧的人“没有教养，有故意搞笑的心态”。另外一位评论员写道，多数办公室恶作剧“都带有攻击性，可能会对工作环境构成负面影响”。
但当我进一步搜索相关文章时，一个让我有所安慰的证据出现了： 1999年发表于《美国管理学院日报》 (Journal of the American Academy of Management)的某项研究总结道：“幽默能够提高个人和团队业绩”，不过调查警告称“幽默的效果取决于谁来用它，有魄力的领导人可利用它产生积极的效果，但自由放任的老板如果想要尝试搞笑，却(可能造成)损害。”
学术界的话语总是不那么直白。它们的意思是：办公室幽默是滑稽的事情。就像一位同事将其他同事的订书机放在胶水里，一些人会气得歇斯底里，另外一些人却认为它像《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)那样有趣一样，我们不可能将办公室幽默一概而论。简而言之，成功制造一次办公室恶作剧比把人类送上太空还难。
当然，最安全的做法就是不要犯傻。但我认为，犯傻也是让办公生活变得可以忍受的方法之一。我甚至可以说，做不做恶作剧的问题引发了公司生活最深层次的难题，而这一难题从我们工作的第一天开始就出现了：在遵章守纪的压力下，我们敢保持多少个性呢？
几番思量之后，我得出结论：制造恶作剧是有好处的。但在你按下某位同事电话上的按钮（这样，挂断电话后，电话还会继续响个不停），或者给老板一张留言条，请他打电话给里昂先生（Lyon，与狮子lion同音：译者注）并附上本地动物园的电话之前，提醒自己一些关于办公室幽默的基本原则还是有必要的。
（1） 人们很少像他们自己认为的那样滑稽。
（2） 玩笑是主观和伤人的，没有人人都喜欢的笑话，几乎每个笑话都会有一个受害者。在你制造任何恶作剧之前，你应该问问自己：我的受害者能否承受得住？
（3） 玩笑完全在于时机的选择。玩笑对象不是太忙的时候，可能认为这个玩笑有趣；当他或她正在赶工时，玩笑可能就变得没那么有趣了。如果你开玩笑的次数多过上厕所，那么你就有问题了：你是个制造麻烦者。
（4） 制造一个影响整个公司或一个大部门的恶作剧不是件好事。每个人的幽默感不同，总有一部分人认为你愚蠢。注意！
（5） 记住玩笑对象的国籍。我听说，日本人喜欢开一些看得见的玩笑（比如假发等），然而很明显的是，很少有德国人认为工作时搞些轻松节目是合适的。
（6） 记住你的职业。在医药行业，在某人抽屉里放一只人手不算可笑，而在法律行业，在其屁股底下放一个吱吱作响的坐垫，就已经是开玩笑的极限了。
然而，有两种情况并不适用于上述条款。第一种情况是，玩笑对象曾就读过英国私立学校。他们所受教育的很大一部分在嬉笑怒骂中度过，因此，对他们开玩笑几乎总会行得通。他们承受得住。实际上，一些人只能靠激怒他们来进行交流。
还有一种情况是，你是别人恶作剧的对象。如果某人在你的《Heat》八卦杂志中画上了一些生殖器符号，并从你的电脑上给老板发送了一条信息，说你自愿做一些你无意去做的事情，我认为，你完全可以对此采取报复手段。至少，这就是我最后点击“发送”，却无半点内疚的原因。
