From the time we found out that the 72-year-old Jimmy Cayne smoking weed while one of Bear Stearns hedge funds was imploding to the time Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit tried to build a Zen garden with taxpayer money to the circuslike atmosphere of just about every House Finance Commitee hearing this year, the financial crisis been laced with moments of true hilarity, and even as the world appeared to be collapsing most of us have found it in ourselves to laugh, one time or another, at the absurdity of it all. But not, apparently, the people at the Treasury’s Bureau of the Public Debt, whose senses of humor have declined in inverse proportion to the deficit. As evidenced by the meeting this spring when J.P.Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon was rudely rebuffed when he tried to hand Secretary Geithner an Ed McMahon—style TARP-payback check, they have utterly lost their senses of humor. So they’re looking for someone to come in to conduct an in-house humor program.
Per the Federal Business Opportunities website:
The Contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour, Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life. Participants shall experience demonstrations of cartoons being created on the spot. The contractor shall have the ability to create cartoons on the spot about BPD jobs. The presenter shall refrain from using any foul language during the presentation. This is a business environment and we need the presenter to address a business audience.
What? Hmmm. Artistic ability — Larry Summers bone-smuggling jokes? That excludes us. But if you can come up with a cartoon about the Treasury Department that will make the Treasury Department laugh — or at least, make us laugh — send it in and we’ll put it up on Daily Intel!
Humor in the Workplace [FBO via Clusterstock]
