There were five of us in the meeting. It included two representatives of my client company and two representatives from another consulting outfit they had working on a particular aspect of the project. And then there was me.
One of my client representatives was explaining her hopes for the project. “If this achieves what we think it will,” she said, “we’ll all have our choice of offers.”
“Or,” her colleague added, “our choice of tee times.”
Don’t bother asking about the context. It’s not important. It was merely your standard gosh-if-we-all-make-a-fortune-just-think-of-all-the-golf-we-can-play type comment. So was the response from the consultants.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!” The head is thrown back in raucous hilarity. The hands fly up in the air, until one grabs the stomach to keep it from pumping itself dry from the sheer mirth of it all.
Everyone looks at everyone else with the satisfaction of knowing that, yes, in the midst of this oh-so-serious business initiative, we have just shared a witty.
Except me. This is a problem for me. Or maybe it’s a problem for everyone but me. This little business ritual—raucous laughter at the marginally humorous comment—I simply cannot join. It’s not so much that I refuse, although I do, but I couldn’t join in even if I wanted to.
Laughter isn’t something I can fake. I don’t know how anyone can. Every other conceivable emotion or wild expression, I can see a way. Crying? Think of your dead grandfather. Anger? Think of the non-call on Drew Pearson’s pushoff in the 1975 playoffs. (Obviously.) If you want to learn to fake certain other things, I’ll refer you to Meg Ryan.
But laughter? Now surely, you ask, how hard can this be? Think of a Robin Williams routine. Think of the time you were playing Trivial Pursuit and your cousin pronounced the word “garbagemen” as garba-GEmen. Think of the Detroit Lions.
Sure. If you were an actor filming a scene, you could try all these things, but that’s because you’re following the script and you know what’s coming. In a business meeting, you never know when someone’s going to deploy some lame piece of alleged wit and everyone else will feel compelled to bust up.
Besides, it’s hard enough to concentrate on looking like you’re paying attention while you’re actually posting on Facebook. If I have to stay ready at a moment’s notice to fake-laugh too…dude, it’s too much.
And of course, there’s also a principle involved here. Why do we pretend to find things funny that aren’t? I suppose people have done this since time immemorial, at least when you’re in the presence of presidents and kings and they decide it’s time to show what jocular fellows they really are.
“Why, my reign has been a jolly old adventure for me, but I’m not sure I can say the same for the Moors!”
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!!!! Good one, Sire. (Will someone behead the royal joke writer and start looking for a new one?)
I guess you laugh because, if you don’t, you’re not so sure the king won’t be sending you off to the guillotine as well. But are you really so insecure in your business relationships that you feel the need to do the same thing with some dumb client? Granted, the client probably won’t feel too self-assured by his or her joke bombing. But you know how you always tell clients you’ll tell them what you really think instead of just telling them what they want to hear? And you know how they always tell you that’s what they want, because no one gets any benefit from having a yes man around?
Did you really mean that? Did they? Are you sure? Because if the client’s humor has no clothes, and you don’t speak up and say so (or at least plant the seed with your silence), you might send that client out into the public square in all his gut-wrenching nakedness, with fat folds jiggling and hairy orifices sending people sprinting to the community vomitorium—all because you could have said something, but instead you did your imitation of Ed McMahon.
“But D.F.,” you protest, “Ed McMahon got paid millions for years just to sit on a couch and pretend he thought stuff was funny! Who wouldn’t want a gig like that?” Let me just remind you that Ed McMahon ended up bankrupt, narrating QVC infomercials for WhizzoSpreadoSlicoGidgets at 3 a.m. But you didn’t know that, because you weren’t watching those infomercials. You were searching YouTube for funny videos to memorize, so you could bust a gut the next time your client confused himself with Richard Pryor, and you just had to affirm his quixotic stand-up delusions by emulating the dutiful toady.
This must stop. If we’re ever to be anything as a people, minimal standards of human dignity demand it.
I will not laugh. I will not guffaw. You are not funny and I will not pretend you are. If this stand does not start with me, I don’t know where it will start.
I once felt sorry for myself because I had no ability to laugh, until I met a man who had no mouth. Hey. That’s pretty funny. I don’t hear any laughing!
