Thanksgiving & Your Crazy Relatives!
With Thanksgiving coming up, there is a TON of joke material that will write itself – just the crap that crazy/drunk/oblivious relatives are going to do, will keep you laughing for hours. Well, joking about people isn’t limited to drunk Uncle Charley passing out in the cranberry sauce. You can have fun with people at business events who aren’t related to you. Two groups of people we can joke about:
Vendors/sponsors.
They love it because they never get any recognition aside from like a sentence or two of “thanks” for sending a boatload of money. If you can work in something funny about their product, they will love you. A few years ago I had fun with Duke the Dog from Bush Beans fame. Later the VP caught up with me in the parking lot. As he rolled down the window of his stretch limo, I thought I was in trouble. Instead he was laughing. He said something to the effect of. . . thanks for joking about that dog, that dog has made us a lot of money. We appreciate the extra publicity.
Visible people/Management.
People who are visible in the organization, like volunteers who are elected for a term, or the staff in upper management are used to the limelight, and they even expect it. So having fun with them is usually okay. I’ve had CEOs thank me afterwards because my joking with them showed the rest of the staff that they are approachable and are a “regular” person. And the volunteer leaders usually enjoy the extra attention as well. . .hey, they got active because they WANT to be visible, so help them out a little.
Regular Employees.
I don’t joke too much with regular employees. They don’t want to look goofy in front of their boss, and generally if they’re being ribbed about some incident, they’ve probably heard it A LOT. This isn’t to say you can’t joke with them, but don’t wear the topic out AND be ready to abandon the jokes if the person looks too uncomfortable.
Goofing around with people is a great way to connect
Jan
The next blog entry. . .Now that it’s okay to joke about people. . .how do you write jokes about them.
I rarely pass along funny sites, but if you haven’t heard about Funny or Die, you’re missing out. Some of the videos are a little too riskee (spelling??), but they really do have some good, original stuff.