Bringing the Self to Work
(A Sad, but too True Story)

Years ago, while working with a Department of the State of Connecticut, on the second day of a TeamBuilding Workshop, when the participants were reporting back to the group on "what they learned about themselves, and about this group, and how these learnings would help us in our work," a woman told this story...

I remember the first day I came to work in this unit, some thirty years ago, I told a joke...

And then she reverted all the way back to that day, thirty years before, and began to retell the actual joke. And as she started to tell the joke, everyone else became very quiet and listened attentively, because they knew that she had an exquisite sense of timing and that she would tell the joke with great pizzazz and good humor.*

While everyone else was getting to laugh, I, because I was sitting right next to her, noticed that something strange was happening to her. Her eyes were filling with tears. She was struggling to keep going.

But she did. She finished the joke. It was funny. The whole room broke out into gales of laughter. And she began to cry. Even to sob. I reached out, put my hand on her shoulder, and waited. She stopped crying and then said these words.

I told that joke.

And my BOSS (she said this word almost like a snarl), my boss scowled and walked away.

And let me tell you. That was the last day I ever brought myself to work! Ever since that day I parked myself at the door when I came to work!

And at the end of all those days, I pick myself up as I walk out of work to go back to my life.

And do you know what I have discovered over these thirty years?

I have discovered that I have less Self to pick up.

* If you know the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, you probably recognize the woman as a classic SP - good in crisis, fun-loving, funny, easily bored, frequently unsatisfied in bureaucratic settings with repetitive work.