You gotta have fun at work, man. I know not every job is amazing, but it’s the people that make all the difference. You often spend more of your waking hours with your coworkers than you do with your own family. Might as well try to have some fun in the process, right?
It’s been awhile since I had this kind of fun at work, but back when I worked as a lifeguard, we’d spend the morning cleaning the pools, swimming laps, practicing rescue techniques, doing chemical treatments, straightening up chairs, mowing the grass, doing preventative maintenance, etc., and then we’d open the pool in the afternoons. But sometimes…we’d just plain goof off.
Right around that time, disposable underwater cameras hit the market. I think I grabbed one or two each year I worked as a lifeguard, and we usually came up with some wacky stuff. Pictures started out pretty generic and got more creative or complex over time. At first they’d just have one or two people in them, doing a stupid pose in shallow water.
Then we got more ambitious and brought in more people or prepared more elaborate setups. In the course of doing do, we learned a few things. We learned the best pictures came when the photographer didn’t let their own bubbles get in front of the camera. We learned the more people you were trying to pose, the trickier it became to get them all into position at the desired time. Some people couldn’t hold their breath very long, other people took such a huge breath that they’d start floating to the surface before the picture got snapped. We had two different pools, and we normally did pictures in whichever one had the better water clarity. If that happened to be the deep pool, we also learned it was tricky to get everyone all the way to the bottom and have them stay there for long.
I’m not suggesting you organize a pool party with your coworkers (I mean, unless you want to). I’m saying as long as you’re getting your work done, try to have a little fun in the process. Morale counts for a lot. The person you’re working with is probably not going to become your best friend, but if you can improve things from “bristling at the sight of them” to “getting along with them” or “laughing along with them,” your work day is going to go a lot better. Similarly, imagine how much better things would be if you can graduate from “counting down the days until retirement” to “eh, it’s not so bad” or better yet “yeah, parts of the job aren’t great, but the people make it alright overall.” Anticipating the drudgery of work will suck the life out of you. The whole equation changes when your workplace isn’t a place you dread.