Fun at Work?

Sports Night, a show that ABC cancelled inexplicably after it won several Emmy Awards in its third season, presents a workplace that is friendly in senses that go beyond anything I've ever experienced. Dan and Casey, the sports news show anchors featured on the show, are best friends. Natalie and Jeremy, both high-up producers, are dating for most of the series. Dana, the executive producer, has a fling with Casey. And between all of that, everyone on the show obviously works in an environment where they're at the office late into the night working on an extremely collaborative sort of project, which seems to create an almost homelike situation in that workplace. On the show, that kind of scenario is downright irresistible; when someone messes up at work, his or her job is not immediately on the line, and everyone helps to fix the mistake. And everyone's at work with their friends, which makes "work" itself seem more appealing. Plus, these people are all doing a sports show, talking and working with the very sort of information by which many of us are distracted at our jobs that have nothing to do with it. I would love working in an environment like that, but none of the workplaces I've seen (or really even heard of) in my lifetime are anything like that.

Let's take as an example the office at Pitt in which I work as a tutor. It's quite an amicable place; all of the staff get along for the most part, and all are quite friendly and professional when at work. But with one very discreet exception, there has been no intra-office romance. And except for Josh and I, no one who works there seems to be very close friends with anyone else in the office. So while the place is great when compared to the average office with at least a few incompetant and/or rude people, it's nothing compared to the idyllic work environment depicted on Sports Night. Of course, I'm willing to throw out there the possibility that I'm completely full of it and that many of those who read this blog work in places that are like the one on Sports Night, but from what many of you have said to me about your various jobs, this seems unlikely.

So when I think about Sports Night, one of the questions is always how a show that depicts something so utterly unrealistic nonetheless manages to be so appealing. And here's what I've come up with. When I'm in one of my offices, there are always escapist moments here and there when I fantasize about what it's going to be like when I can actually leave the office. In addition to a workplace pastime, escapism is often the motive for various entertainment as well. I mean, seriously, why do millions flock to theaters for films like Under Siege and Speed? The average moviegoer likes these sorts of things because they provide him/her with an escape from the constant, nagging thoughts about when he/she will have to return to work. But Sports Night is the ultimate escapist fantasy, one much better than what the aforementioned films provide. It proposes something ridiculously appealing: What if the workplace were so great we didn't want to escape it? Oh, would that it were...