I have only worked in two other offices prior to starting Netccentric but from whatever little experience I have, my observation is that people curse a lot in the office. Blame it on stress, blame it on influence from American TV or blame it on anything but in all 3 offices I’ve worked in (the first two being investment banks in K) there was some good amount of cursing that goes on each day. Of course to be fair the cursing that goes on is always in a very casual way, not in a scolding kind of way. Like I have to admit that I curse every now and then in conversation but when I’m having an argument or scolding anyone I never curse.
Yesterday though we decided to have some fun in the office. We decided to put together this thing we called a “Fuck Jar”. So every time anyone says the word “Fuck”, he/she will have to pay a RM0.50 fine into the jar. To throw a little more fun into it, we decided that there will be no change given. So if you say the F word once but your smallest note in your wallet is RM5, then you will have to pay the RM5 instead of just the RM0.50. Unless of course you manage to beg for smaller change from someone else in the office.
When I walked in that morning the jar looked like this.
Clearly some people who weren’t fond of mornings had already started some of the cursing. The rest of the day went on with everyone waiting to catch everyone else cursing. At first the F words came naturally on its own. We also noticed that F words came in pairs. Say for example someone drops something she curses “FUCK!!!”. Then after realizing that she just got fined she would shout again “FUCKKK!!!” only to then close her mouth with her hands to prevent from talking further.
As more and more people got fined, everyone started being more and more careful. So to make sure that the F Jar’s contributions continued, people started tricking or provoking people to say the F word.
Like Rachel, I saw her sitting down at her work station leaning back a bit on her chair. So I suddenly jerked her chair downward to make her think like she was falling Inception style. Her immediate reaction was a loud scream. Then a few seconds of silence passed and I thought I had failed to provoke the F word out of her. But after those few seconds it came. She screamed a loud
“FUUUUUUUuuuuuCCCKK!!!”.
We all laughed and got her to contribute to the jar. By mid day the jar was this full.
On the other side of the office, there was just as much action going on. Shun Yau is one of those macho men and very sensitive about being called gay. So Tim2 asked him “Hey Shun Yau, you’re gay right?” and he responded with a “NO LAH FUCK!”…
Then later in the day another guy Nuffie started playing a little footsie with Shun Yau under the table just to provoke him again. Shun Yau again shouted “WOI FUCCCKK!! DON’T FOOTSIE ME”.
Of course in every office there’s bound to be people that are really hard to get to curse. One of them was Raessa. I tried to scare her by pulling her chair down as well but she didn’t let out any scream. She just turned around and went “Woiii! Tsk!”.
Later on though someone managed to get her to say it. One of the Nuffies asked her “Hey what does Fubu mean ar?”
And she replied “Fuck Buddy”… to a loud cheer of people bringing the “F Jar” to her.
So by the end of the entire day, this was how full our F Jar became.
We collected a total of RM30 in that day that will be used for our lunch fund (to buy us all lunch some day). RM30… that means the F word was said some 60 times in a span of some 8 hours that day. That’s like 7.5 “Fucks” an hour and more than one every ten minutes.
I think we should have this more often to reduce the profanity that goes on in our daily lives. Reminds me of that old Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man set in the future where every time you say a bad word the government fines you?
When I tweeted about it, someone replied saying that for their office they would need a “bucket” instead of a jar. Lol… I thought we were bad.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space