County News

Tim Gard, a "humor philosopher" with Comic Visions of Littleton, Colo., discusses Developing a Comic Vision in a workshop July 19.

If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a joke, only to say, "Oh, wait a minute. Did I forget to say the guy has a duck under his arm?" there’s still hope for you, according to Tim Gard, a consultant in how to use humor on the job.

"I teach humor as a skill," Gard said at a very popular workshop at the Annual Conference. "I want you all to find your own humor. If you can’t tell jokes, don’t."

Gard told the group of more than 140 in the room, and more pressing in from the hallways, to work at finding humor in everyday frustrations and always choose to have fun without malice.

"I was just at an office where people forgot a woman’s birthday," Gard said. "So she got out a phonebook, frosted it and set it out by the coffee machine. When she went back in an hour there were knife marks into the book. By the end of the day people had scraped off all the frosting and ate it."

There are rules for using humor effectively in the workplace, Gard said. The humor should be positive. It can be used as a reward or a punishment (he carries a pair of glasses with a pig snout attached and says he squirts people who fall asleep in his seminars).

Finally, "you need to tell people who work for you how important they are," Gard said. A lot of time you are so busy you don’t realize that humor releases you."

For instance, Gard advised delegates to treat mistakes the same way gymnasts do. Keep going and then dismount. He demonstrated by doing a small jump and sticking his arms in the air.

"If you find you’re taking your work home with you, and the end of the day do a dismount. Say, ‘Wow, I really stuck that day,’ then kick the chair and say ‘you stay here.’ "

Gard ended by having everyone take a comic vision pledge that included the always wise promise not to kiss a moody rhino, then he taught a group of volunteers from the audience to play nose flutes.

"All the things that bother you are waiting for you at home," Gard said. "We laughed today, but I want you to take this home with you. I’m not asking you to build a space shuttle out of household appliances. Just find the things that bother you and use your comic vision to turn them around."