Transcript: Andrew Tarvin on Humor at Work @ TEDxOhioStateUniversity

Andrew Tarvin

Humor engineer Andrew Tarvin presents Humor at Work at TEDxOhioStateUniversity…

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Humor at work by Andrew Tarvin at TEDxOhioStateUniversity

TRANSCRIPT:

Have you ever been in a class that was so boring that you fell asleep and started to dream about happiness and milkshakes?

Only to be woken up by a professor reading slides to you? I’m here to tell you that when you enter the corporate world, it doesn’t get any better. But the good news is that it can.

The problem with people in the corporate world is sometimes they’re so focused on the bottom line that they just focus in on efficiency. And I love efficiency, I’m an engineer, I’m obsessed with it. In fact, I was even born three weeks early because apparently, even in the womb, I said: “I’m ready to go right now!”

But the problem is that just because something is efficient, it doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Just because something saves time, it doesn’t mean that it actually gets results.

And if you’re thinking: “Why should I believe you, skinny Hugh Jackman?”

First of all, you don’t have to remind me that I’m skinny. I’ve been skinny my entire life, I was born 8.3 pounds and then stayed that way till I was 15 years old.

But second, it’s because I’ve actually been there. The summer between my junior and senior year of college, I interned at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. And at the end of the summer, I had to give a presentation to a review board that would ultimately decide whether or not I could get hired full-time at the company. I slaved over a presentation that I ended up thinking was killer. Killer because it was going to bore them to death.