Penalizing Budding Talent

One fine morning upon arriving at my desk, I found something lying on my table with a note, that seemed to pose a grave threat to one of my most valued congenital faculties- my Punning Humour! A cuboidal pink coloured piggy bank secured with a lock, which has been in the pipeline for weeks now, has finally been materialized by Aicha.  Not just me, it endangers Peter and Kim, who  also suffer the obsessive compulsive disorder of playing with the words. The audience comprises Aicha, Joy and CS mostly, and sometimes rest of my lab members.

The final rules and regulations of this deal were attempted to reach a consensus, with the welfare of all the people around in mind. According to the implemented laws, someone who makes a bad/lame/poor joke/pun is liable to a penalty of S$1/bad joke, which happily makes its way to the fancy piggy bank. How to judge whether the joke is good/bad -- if at least half the audience ends up smiling/laughing, the person is waived from the fine, otherwise you know the fate... Aicha has been generous enough to introduce special discount schemes to encourage us during peak hours (like coffee time) called "Jokes Happy Hours", wherein we will be charged $1/2jokes. With all the honour and privilege, I inaugurated the PB because of a joke which was considered unacceptable without a second thought. Depending on the rate at which the money is collected, we plan to have a small party with the small money.

This PB is taken for every lunch/coffee break, group meetings/events, and is surprisingly proving to be an effective preventive measure. The number of poor joke incidents have drastically fallen with having people to watch their words, in order to save their precious $1 coins (normally preserved for laundry machines!).. Courtesy Peter, one of the inflicted victims, has been able to persuade the committee to reduce the penalty to $0.5, effective from today. The only unreasonable part of this deal is even if someone makes a good joke, there is no $1 reward. The PB is by the people, for the people and of the people- so let’s hope amendments to this law happen soon, in the favour of doers...