Who is your office clown?

Research has shown that the average person spend at least 80 per cent of their time at work.

The disturbing fact is that research has also shown that at least 80 per cent of the people hate their job and that you spend at least 90 000 hours in your life time working.

Some more disturbing facts are that couples of which one partner spend more than 10 hours more that usual at work divorce at twice the average rate. Although the statistics are based in America, I feel it is safe to say that there isn’t much job security in South Africa either since, on average, South Africans hold seven to eight different jobs before the age of 30.

25 per cent of employees say work is their main source of stress and 40 per cent say their job is “very or extremely stressful.”

Some people are very creative in creating a relaxed and enjoyable work area.

The Record team is fortunate enough to have someone who entertains us almost on a daily basis. I don’t want to mention names but he once told us that he and his wife loves candle light and one night, I think it might have been during load shedding, the candles were burning brightly in the lounge. He wanted to fetch something out of the kitchen but without taking a candle to shed some light on the way, he walked into the wall. His words were “I almost broke my nose!”.

Just this morning he was telling us that, over the weekend, washing done and dusted, he displayed their underwear on the bonnet of the car for a quick dry. Completely forgetting about the genius way of quickly drying their underwear, he and his wife drove to his parents’ house in Wilro Park with their underwear still displayed on the bonnet of the car.

Journalism is an extremely stressful job but having someone in the office to lighten some darker moments, it really makes it long hours worth while.

Do you have an office ‘clown?’ Let us know. But please don’t mention names, we don’t want to embarrass people.

You can anonymously send an email to roelienv@caxton.co.za