Humor in the hotel kitchen

It has been claimed that humor can provide organizations with a set of skil ls that will enable employees to remain receptive to change, relieve tensio n, and contribute to reducing the annual $200 billion cost to U.S. industry for treating maladaptive stress (more than the cost of the effects of smok ing). Recently, in Britain, a worker was awarded pound 6,000 for constructive dis missal. The reason was that he is an Irishman who refused to accept "paddy" jokes in his workplace. Go-author Dermott Keegan has been a hotel manager for nearly, twenty years, and had overheard similar jokes in his kitchen. T his incident formed the stimulus for the research on which the paper is bas ed. We aimed to investigate the role that humor plays in an extremely important hotel department-the kitchen-and to examine the effects humor has in this department in such matters as staff retention and training. The ultimate ai m of the research was practical-by viewing the hotel kitchen from the angle of humor, Keegan hoped to improve the smooth running of this very signific ant department.