“Let me take a whack at this,” Thao said. “First,” she added, “I will henceforth be known as the Funmeister. I'm an old Saturday Night Live fan and this title is at last mine. Now as far as my idea, I like the idea of getting twofers out of this. After all, aren't we supposed to be finding ways to make the work fun while also improving our productive efforts? My idea, then, is to use our customer letters to both lighten up what we do, and also learn from our customers at the same time. Let me give you an example that no one has seen, since management never shows customer complaint letters to anyone but the person who is affected. I think it's so funny that I don't mind sharing with you.”

Thao then began reading:

Dear Environmental Engineering Company:

Last week, I called your company seeking its expertise on an environmental problem my organization has. We are a healthy food company specializing in garlic and garlic-related products. One of our unique features is that we try to hire people who actively share our philosophy about the healthy benefits of using our product, and we have been very successful with about two-thirds of our workforce being committed to using the product we produce on a regular basis. Many of them are also vegans or vegetarians, and don't believe in using products that have artificial ingredients in them. Our problem is that the other one-third of our employees find the working environment too odorous, and we are receiving a number of complaints and suffering too much turnover.

We were referred to Ms. Thao Meister. We found her laughter as we described the problem to be irritating and her suggestion as to how to correct it [Give your employees deodorant] to be offensive. We think we have a serious problem and were hoping that your organization could help us. The reaction of Ms. Meister was so intolerable that we will never seek to do business with you again and hope that you find an appropriate way to discipline her.

Sincerely,

Julie Marsden

Garla Food Company

Thao finished reading the letter and looked up to see everyone smiling broadly.

“You see what I mean?” said Thao. “I know now that I shouldn't have laughed and that these folks were serious about their problem, but think of how this would hit you the first thing in the morning. This was just too hilarious not to laugh. I have been properly reprimanded for my response to it, and I fully understand why. My point is that everyone messes up like this now and then, and we could take the funnier letters and use them to talk about customer service and how to see things through our clients' eyes better than we might otherwise. If nothing else, it would give us a laugh while reminding us of the many funny things customers do and how seriously we need to treat them. I remember hearing the old Walt Disney story about how many guests ask the Disney employees, ‘What time is the three o'clock parade?' We all get crazy questions and they make us laugh, but they also have a serious purpose that is worth talking about. I think that would be fun.”

The Fun Minute Manager is written by Bob Pike, Robert C. Ford and John W. Newstrom. The book is scheduled to be released in June 2009.