Fun Times

A bunch of my retired J&J friends gathered to watch the Royal Wedding last month. Wearing appropriately outlandish, custom-made hats, we drank champagne, ate scones and toasted Prince William and his lovely bride, Princess Catherine. We laughed over the ridiculous hats (ours and those of the attendees), replayed the kiss, and reminisced about times in the past we had spent together having fun. At work.

This got me thinking: Does anyone actually have fun at work anymore?

We were (with the exception of one person) all part of a single department, and we called ourselves the “Foster Children” at J&J – hired, trained and sometimes brow-beaten by Larry Foster, VP of Corporate Communications and head taskmaster. But as overworked and underpaid as we might have felt, we learned some valuable lessons in our tenure together. First, “Mr. Foster” – that’s what we called him, just like Mary always called Lou “Mr. Grant” – hired us because we were good at what we did. And second, he trusted us to do what we did to the highest possible standards. No one ever had to tell us to improve our performance, though he could clearly have improved our raises. And while we worked hard and earned his respect and that of his successors, we also learned one other important thing: We learned how to have fun at work.

Many years have passed and yet today any one of the women I worked with will tell you about a bus ride into New York for some event when I consumed more than my share of a bottle of champagne. I’m sketchy on the details myself, but everyone there that night can recall that we had a lot of laughs on that trip to the city.

Back in those days, everyone knew the names of everyone else’s family members. We beamed at their kids’ graduations and agonized over girlfriends. We danced at their weddings and were thrilled when their kids had their babies. We knew one another, and we were friends.

At lunchtime we would sit at a large table in the cafeteria and have long and deep discussions on such topics as the color of everyone’s Macy’s charge card. I would regale them with tales of my parents’ trips to the Catskills, and how they would grab “falata cakes” – extra pastries to have as snacks between meals – you know, “for later.” When we worked late, as we often did, we would sometimes call my mother and put her on the speakerphone, where her deep, Maude-like voice and pithy advice would make everyone chuckle.

In the evening, at least a few of us would take that long walk to the parking deck together – ostensibly for security purposes – and then linger by our cars to talk some more.

There were the days when, quite by accident, nearly everyone (and we are talking here about an all-female group) would show up wearing the same color dress – because, yes, we only wore dresses or suits then, never pants – so we would plan special wardrobe days. The next designated day the entire department of women – more than a dozen of us – would all appear in floral print dresses or something in blue. Once we all decided to wear basic black and pearls, and people came up to us all day sheepishly asking, “Did someone die?”

Preparations for the Annual Shareholders Meeting or traveling to Worldwide Management Conferences required even longer hours than were customary, with months of preparation and enough time to grouse over “facebooks” showing pictures of attendees (some of which apparently hadn’t been updated since the participants were in high school) or “wallybooks,” which were special books needed for a guy named Wally. We bonded against our chosen enemies – anyone who heaped extra work upon the group but expressed little appreciation for the effort – but we never let anyone feel like the burden was theirs alone. There were always people who would volunteer to help, to proofread speeches and press releases, to check lists or do whatever it took to make sure the project was done to absolute perfection. This was one crack team, believe me, and if they ran the U.S. government, we’d be in much better shape today as a country.

These people were my friends, and while we worked hard, we laughed hard, too. There was the time my assistant stood up from her chair and her skirt literally fell off, causing me to laugh out loud for the next 20 minutes. We cared about each other. When you were sick, someone had the “magic crackers” to help settle your stomach. We made sure we had our fun, no matter what else was going on. And we stayed together as a unit for many years.

Eventually, and happily, we began to retire, one by one. We swore we would see each other, but we let time and all our new activities that we never had time to do while working get in the way. So getting together doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does it is special, just like those times when we saw each other every day. The conversations pick up where they left off, and the laughs flow easily.

In a world of work that is truly 24/7, with more demands and fewer resources, with people vying to get ahead and changing jobs much more frequently than people did in “my generation” I have to wonder: Does anyone have any fun anymore? Though I am skeptical, I hope the answer is yes, though I am convinced that no one could have more fun than we did.

When I retired, people asked me if I would miss work. No, I said, emphatically. I’ll just miss the people. But I don’t really have to miss them, because I still get to see them, and I have a lifetime of laughter to conjure up and so many memories of times spent together. What fun we had! I just hope this generation can someday say the same.