BUSINESS STRESS RELIEF
I Laughed My Way Through 3 Careers With Lots of Ideas You Can Relate To!
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
DEALING WITH BUSINESS OWNERS
I got into the accounting world in a rather conventional way. My father was a CPA, and while he never dictated what I should do for a living; the unspoken choice seemed to be between majoring in accounting or working as a dishwasher. The first seemed more logical, even though my dishes would always be somewhat dirty! As I got on in the profession, I began to understand that my sense of humor could be used to help with stressful business situations at every level.
It’s Fun Being Superman
Two of my Accounting partners had been annoying each other for some time, and they asked me to help mediate their differences. After attending several miserable meetings with them, I realized that something different was required to get an agreement going. Several months before this, I’d seen an ad in the CPA Journal for a Superman CPA T-shirt. It looked just like the top of Superman’s uniform except that the letters “CPA” were in its center. I bought it because I thought it would be fun to have. Then I realized how helpful it could be. Before my next meeting with the partners, I put on my Superman T-shirt under my dress shirt and tie. The meeting was held after working hours at our office, and as it progressed, they became more and more annoyed with each other. Suddenly, I stood up and told them, “You both think you are good CPAs, but I want you to listen to me because I am Super CPA.” They looked at me as if I was out of my mind until I removed my tie, ripped open my shirt, and they saw my Superman T-shirt. When they finished laughing (it took about 10 minutes), they settled down, and we were able to work out a compromise agreement between them that day. Later, one of them asked me if I thought this would have worked if I had dressed like Batman. I told him it would have been too much work because I would had to have also dressed one of our junior accountants as Robin! He never mentioned it again.
PRACTICAL ADVICE:
This was a real-life example of how humor can defuse frustration. The two accountants were actually very nice people, but they could only hear what the other one was saying as an impediment to what they wanted. Breaking out in my costume was so unexpected that they shifted their frustration to humor and allowed an eventual compromise. This was an unusual situation, but if you find yourself with people who are arguing with each other, consider doing or saying something outlandishly different. Strangely, this may help you to relieve enough tension to get them to settle down to a real dialogue again.
ANOTHER TRUE STORY:
You Do Not Have To Always Say What You Are Thinking:
As I mentioned earlier, my manufacturing and distribution companies were in a business location that required constant vigilance. Here’s another example of how humor can help a rather stressful situation. It started when we noticed that during the past few days there was a strange odor in our warehouse, and we could not figure out what was causing it. I decided that the safest thing to do was to call in the city Health Inspector. When he arrived, I described the problem to him. He walked through the warehouse, then came back to me and said, “You’re right. There is a bad smell here and you had better get rid of it”. Of course, what I really wanted to respond was “that was brilliant, only an eighteen year old student that was still in the third grade could have come up with that answer.” Instead, I smiled and said, “we’ll do our best, using either a pine or lavender odor spray.” He looked at me strangely, and left.
After a few days, I became a little more concerned, and decided to call the police. I was very careful to explain that this was not an emergency, but just a remote chance that we had a problem in the warehouse needing outside help. Five policemen immediately arrived with their car sirens on and lights flashing. They came rushing into my office, and I told them the problem. They then thoroughly searched our warehouse and found nothing.
Next, they said we should go up to our roof to look at the air-conditioning ducts as a possible way to trace this strange odor. When we got to the roof, they became frustrated and said they wanted to tear off the air conditioning ducts to look further. Of course, what I wished to say was “whenever you do, don’t ever try to run a business!” However, I said, “if the air conditioning doesn’t work it will be so hot, all our employees will come to work naked, and we don’t have that type of business license.” They all looked at me silently, gave a few small smiles, and finally went away.
After they left, I was still standing on the roof with my Warehouse Manager. He happened to look over the side of the building, and saw the source of the bad odor. The sad news was that it was the body of a large dog that had passed away next to our building. The good news was that it wasn’t anything worse! Oh the joys of running a business without always saying what you were really thinking!
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Howard Reiss has written BUSINESS STRESS RELIEF as a very useful gift for anyone in business. He has combined his real-life management experiences in three different careers with his unusual ability to see them from the humorous side of the desk. He wrote this book after conversations and lectures with many business people about how he used humor to relieve lots of stressful business situations.
They often asked if he could organize them into a helpful book they could refer to when their stress levels at work were “way too high”. They were not looking for a “joke” book, just funny ideas to relieve tension. They were frustrated because none of them had ever found anything with those qualities in bookstores or on the Internet.
Their requests became his inspiration to write this book. His experience is best summarized by what he wrote in the introduction:
“Humor must be tailored to each individual; because of the different ways that everyone perceives what is funny. But the principle is the same for all: when you imagine a business situation carried to a funny extreme, the real-life situation you’re in always appears much less stressful!”
About the Author
Howard Reiss had been a partner in a CPA firm, and then owned and ran manufacturing and distribution companies (where he discovered that he could sell and also show his people how to improve their sales). Later, he used his unusual combination of business and sales knowledge to help many other companies increase their sales and profitability. He also gave all of them ideas about how to reduce stress with their employees, suppliers, and customers or clients. Luckily, his most reliable friend throughout these careers has always been his sense of humor. It seems to have a mind of its own, and always arrives just in time when business stress has come to call.