You have to hand it to The Onion. Somehow they have a knack of taking the mundane and satirising it joyously. This time, they’ve targeted those ‘how to improve productivity’ stories and surveys that I spend so much time reading (and writing) in Study finds working at work improves productivity. Here’s an excerpt:
To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking, staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks. Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.
And then the trademark deadpan line…
The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to fields outside the insurance industry.
And the closing punchline…
Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they still do not feel comfortable working on the job.
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Oh my! Staggering results indeed. (tongue in cheek smile).
I just hope that managment at most of the UK high street banks read this study. Imagine the possibilities!
Brilliant. It reminds me of an old joke pulled in the Dallas Times Herald newsroom. When a disgruntled reporter returned from lunch, someone sent out a message from his email address to the entire newsroom. It read: “I am back in the office, but I will not work.”
It does make you wonder what they will come up with next. May be it is a sort of publicity stunt to grab a headline.
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