Happy Hour is 9 to 5 by Alexander Kjerulf Read Free Book Online Page B

set the tone for the day, he plowed the area in front of Great Harvest, just in time for their 6 a.m. opening. Customers poured in and by the end of the day, the two Lansing bakeries ended up raising more than $5,500. Every penny that went into the registers that day — whether for bread, cookies, or coffee — went directly to tsunami relief efforts. “We’re just a small company,” says Dee, “but it sure makes us feel good knowing we can make a difference in other people’s lives.”
The O’Connors credit their crew, who worked for free all day, and their customers for the tremendous show of support. “There was a great camaraderie and sense of significance over this event,” says Bernie. “We couldn’t have done it without them.”
    One of the best ways to find meaning is to contribute to something other than yourself. You can use work as a springboard to help the community, a charity, the environment, society, developing nations — anything that makes sense to you.
    Knowing that you have helped others through your work is a tremendous source of meaning. It is direct evidence that you are making the world a better place and helping people out. It’s also immensely satisfying, and a great way to get happy at work.
    Go green
    In the excellent documentary The Corporation, the late Ray Anderson, at the time the CEO of Interface, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer, explains his rude awakening to the fact that his company could not continue to waste natural resources:
“It dawned on me that the way I’d been running Interface is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth. And I said to myself, “My goodness, a day must come where this is illegal, where plundering is not allowed. I mean, it must come.” So I said to myself, “My goodness, some day people like me will end up in jail.”
    Interface designed and manufactured a new kind of carpet that was environmentally friendly, and while the design and production of this new product was more expensive than their regular line, it instantly became a bestseller and has made the company a fortune.
    More and more companies are starting to care for the environment, and this is one area in which we can all contribute. Can you get your company to recycle paper? To use less electricity or water? To save on fuel or other resources? To start buying more environmentally friendly products? Make yourself heard, start a campaign, enlist support. Go green!
    Be positive

“I have this co-worker who is almost always cheerful,” says Paul, a 28-year-old schoolteacher. “It doesn’t matter how busy we are, how many problems we’re having, or how bad the weather is outside — he is unfailingly cheerful, relaxed, positive and optimistic, and sees the best in everything and everybody.
“He’s a life-saver. There is always a positive, calm atmosphere around him, people visibly relax and become more open and constructive when they work with him, and his optimism infects others, which means that we all tend more to see solutions than problems.”
“While he himself gets no more work done than anyone else, I still think he is responsible for a large part of our school’s success, because his happiness at work spreads to so many other people.”
    Being positive is an incredibly important skill to learn, a skill that is key to both happiness and success at work. Positive people and positive workplaces choose to focus on possibilities, solutions, advantages and fun. It’s not that they ignore problems, disadvantages and threats — far from it — it’s just that they have found that being positive makes you both happier and more efficient. Psychological research clearly shows that they’re onto something:
As a young psychology student at Pennsylvania University in the sixties, Martin Seligman was troubled. He’d designed a ground-breaking experiment, which involved giving dogs mild electric shocks