Banana Times

Banana Times

Suddenly a world that once yearned for 'Work From Home' appears to have got fatigued with this arrangement. It now badly yearns for 'Work From Office'!

Whilst occasional convenience of WFH is appreciable, a co- located Work-place provides a critical arena for Relationship Building & Socialisation that cannot be undervalued.

'Banana Times' is a Donald Roy story of a group of machine operators who kept away their workplace boredom by indulging in smart horseplay & adopting simple rituals.

This work group was clearly abandoned by their Management to it's creativity for creating job satisfaction. The work they did was repetitive, monotonus & boring. Despite that, people found meaning in their work by making a game out of everything.

There were ritualistic patterns of horseplay among workers, often childish jokes on each other. These interruptions would initiate verbal exchanges & through such processes engage the group members until the next interruption.

Built into socialisation rituals were peach time, banana time, window time, lunch time, pickup time & coke time.

There may be Zoom times now in the digital era but it cannot replace peoples' need for 'Banana Time' which provides Socialization and Relationship building opportunities at the work-place to people.