A few years ago, a co-worker and I were tasked with creating an internal sites page. At the time of the request, our team had reached an all time high with our stress levels, which had led to us finding silly ways to cope, and included a day where I used the word "supposably" in place of "supposedly" for hours (through a full team meeting and an entire crew call), to bring some kind of levity to the insanity. The mis-use of the word was confusing at first, and then funny, and then got pretty annoying I think, and then managed to reach a level of humor that we didn't know was possible. :) It reminded me of this clown theory my friend Joan (who's a clown) had told me about regarding the power of humor in repetition.
All of this to say, we decided to name our sites page the "Producer Clown Theory of Masterful Operations"; headlining the page with a quote I made up based on the result of the "supposably day" that also seemed to be reflective of parts of our job and what I remembered from the clown theory.
"The act of repetition: moving from humor through pain and back to an absurdly, wonderful delight."
- Anonymous K (by way of Joan the clown)
We, of course, thought the naming convention and the quote was brilliant and hilarious and completely relevant.
Our manager didn't seem to have a strong reaction to the page name at first, but, over time, it became pretty clear that she wasn't a big fan. She would find ways to bring up gentle criticisms of the page, other ways it should be executed, and eventually just wanted a different resource all together. The information on the page was good, but the name seemed to make her pretty uncomfortable -- and, in the process of trying to get rid of it, she had to say it over and over while doing her best to hide her discomfort. Which. Was. Perfection. 😁
The page is now deprecated, though still internally searchable, and still bringing me endless amounts of joy. 😂
