When I started at my present company, I walked around one Friday night just after business hours shortly after my first week to the sounds of gunfire and echoed screams. While this would be startling in some of the places I have worked in the past, it is apparently quite normal in the software development industry.
Oh, let me qualify the above statement as well by clarifying that the screams were mere virtualizations of employees as they butchered one another over the network on a connected edition of Unreal Tournament (there was no actual carnage taking place). Yes, that’s right – it was ritual around here, for many years prior to my arrival, to order in some pizza on a Friday night after work and let loose with some online gaming. And while I had some initial reservations about the nature of the violence in the games, it was always quite amazing to see just how passionate people were about these Friday nights and how the death and destruction in the game took a back seat to the team building and socialization that emerged. Try as they might to get UT loaded on my machine and have me stay for a game, I never could bring myself to getting pulverized by 10-15 experienced gamers – you see, the last game console I owned (and finally got rid of about 2 years ago) was a Nintendo 64.
Now, even more recently, my young son of just over 3 years has shown an interest in educational games for the PC. He has access to computers at school and can navigate is way around a laptop at home. In fact, he is ambidextrous with a mouse and can out-manoeuvre and out-click me with either hand! This got me thinking more and more about looking into full gaming consoles – Xbox, Playstation and Wii.
The more I looked at consoles, the more I focused on the Wii. While it lacks top end graphics, has no hard drive and the dvd-player only loads games of of dvd’s (will not even play movies!), it seems to be the systems that is most interactive and physically involved. In fact, I read somewhere that the Wii is the system you bring out when you have your friends over and you’re all a little “tippy” (shall we say). Meaning… That it is the fun system, the one not to take seriously, the one that brings people together.
This got me thinking. Why not a Wii for the office? There are sports games that might be able to invigorate some healthy competition, with the Wii Fit you could start some yoga classes on the lunch hour, and there’s other activities like dancing or snowboarding that are activity based and get people moving. Did I mention that the Wii is also the cheapest of the 3 consoles?
While I am not trying to make this a Wii ad, through my research of a gaming console for personal use, it gave me some great ideas for an interactive system that could be brought to any office to support and enhance healthy lifestyles and inject some fun and excitement at the same time. So, if you are looking for some inexpensive ways to excite and motivate employees, look no further than gaming – an activity once thought only to numb the mind and stagnate the body.
OK, I’ll maybe focus on death in a later post, but I wanted to take a moment to share the content of a posting from a fellow blogger. His posting comes from an e-mail that has been circulating that helps to demystify how taxation works within the U.S. system. I believe this model also speaks quite well to the Canadian tax system, and given that the U.S. Presidential elections are today, I thought I would take the opportunity to add this to my blog space.
Hopefully, if nothing else, it will get you thinking financially and hone those lateral thinking skills. I know this is a stretch from typical HR matters, but I do that every now and again. Although, we all get paid for working… when we get paid, taxes are deducted… Voila – a connection, albeit a weak one. The source of the original composition, by the way, is David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, University of Georgia.
Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics…
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too.
It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I got’ ‘That’s true!!’
shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Follow me on Twitter