Laugh Along With Centrelink

[Banjo]

Centrelink spends up for a laugh

WHILE its clients might not have much to be happy about, Centrelink has spent thousands of dollars on teaching its employees how to laugh.

A workshop of up to 150 Centrelink staffers - from customer service representatives to management - were given a session on "laughter yoga" by a company called Laughter Works at a cost to taxpayers of $2500.

The top testimonial on the Laughter Works website is from Centrelink and states: "I think it really hit the mark ... As a workplace health and safety measure, I sensed that it was appreciated by a majority.""Laughter leader" Cris Popp told The Daily Telegraph there were "more than 20 and less than 150" people at the session.

He said a critical part of laughter yoga was "don't use humour", but that the physical act of laughing would ease stress.

The Melbourne-based company's website says Mr Popp "trained with the founder of the world laughter movement, Madan Kataria, and founded the South Yarra laughter club".A Centrelink spokeswoman said: "The company was only engaged on a one-off basis to provide an ice-breaker session during the opening hour of a two-day leadership meeting in June 2010. The session ... cost around $2500."
www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/centrelink-spends-up-for-a-laugh/story-e6freuzi-1226120013778

[spaceyone]

I thought they got their laughs from cutting off our payments.

[latindancer]

Well, they certainly need to lighten up a bit. And although some employees are control freaks or idiots, the rest are only human, and no doubt get stressed out in their jobs from dealing with some of the dramas people present them with. Then the stress gets transferred to other unfortunate customers who are innocent of wrongdoing.
Maybe it's just my sense of the bizarre, but the "laughter therapy" article reminds me of the Monty Python story about Happy Valley :

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lay in a valley far, far away in the mountains the most contented kingdom the world has ever known. It was called Happy Valley, and it was ruled over by a wise old king called Otto. And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death, along with the trade union leaders, many years before. And all the happy folk of Happy Valley sang and danced all day long, and anyone who was for any reason miserable or unhappy or who had any difficult personal problem was prosecuted under the Happiness Act.

[spaceyone]

Lol, I remember that. Which MP album was that from?

And yes, they are still human. Which means a percentage of them are just normal people doing a boring low-paid job. Maybe its once you start writing letters of complaint, you get to meet the real assholes. The ones promoted for simply being that, and to their levels of incompetence.

[spaceyone]

Just saw this joke on another forum, and had to post it here.

Man says to wife, "I had to show my grey chest hair to get my pension today".

Wife says, "You should have gone a bit further down, we'd get disability allowance!"