Humor in the Workplace

In an effort to deal with my recent screwup (one of two recent ones), I decided to try and laugh at it a bit.

Our organization is very young and since the on-boarding of our new CIO, our directive has been to stabilize current processes. In that regard, the VP who heads up the Infrastructure team has placed placards on his office window signifying the number of days one or another system has been up with no interruption in service.

I ran into him in the hallway and suggested he put one up for me too, "Days since Chet 'messed' up Production code." He got a hearty laugh out of that.

I've always been able to laugh at myself, if not immediately, then soon after. So I put up a hand made sign in my cube that read the same thing; I'm at 21 days. Hopefully it will remind me as I'm pouring through code not to touch that which is out of scope with the current requirements. That was my mistake on both occurences.

It's definitely a talking piece and hopefully people can laugh at it (as I can...sortof), but it will be a constant reminder to me as well.