You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here: A Psychiatrist’s Life

Product Information

Office noticeboard on which snitters (q.v.), cards saying ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but if you are it helps!!!’ and slightly smutty postcards from Ibiza get pinned up by snitterbies (q.v.).

Reply from Quote Investigator: This joke has been employed by famous individuals. For example, in 1933 the entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney received credit for the jest from his secretary:¹Increasingly staff eat on the go, so kitchens and eating areas are now high on the list. Some companies are now even working with outside suppliers to deliver healthy meals direct to their staff, often subsidised, not just as a perceived perk but also as they begin to realise that properly fuelled staff work better, are healthier and perform better. Humane, hilarious and heart-breaking, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is an enlightening and darkly comic window into the world of psychiatry

In 1983 Douglas Adams and John Lloyd published “The Meaning of Liff”. The authors invented definitions for words such as “snitterfield”:¹⁶Relaxation at appropriate times is also beneficial, whether at lunchtime or breaks – quiet areas where you can read a paper or catch up on social media or simply enjoy a much needed cup of tea. For the slightly more energetic, table tennis tables, pool tables and the like are often used as a simple and effective distraction. When Alan blew the whistle on his writing career, Ray wrote with Johnny Speight, who had a different approach. Johnny would never examine his work, he would never rewrite. But Spike did so obsessively.” In June 1925 the humor magazine “Judge” published a crossword puzzle with a clue that referred to playing the saxophone. The answer to the clue was the word “solo”:⁶ In August 1926 a columnist called Percy the Pest in a Quincy, Massachusetts newspaper employed another instance:⁷ It perhaps wasn’t the best time to be on the radical left. As Antrobus explains: “The war had only been over ten years and the BBC was full of bomb-happy ex-Army types who thought they were still in Burma

In April 1940 the jest was still circulating at the Walt Disney Studio according to a report in a Vancouver, Canada newspaper:¹³ He said: “Comedy writers weren’t just creating jokes, they had lives, they had problems and they died. When you start it’s a great giggle. They were good days, but there was unhappiness to come. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ We have extensive experience in developing employee environments for business benefit – why not give us a call today.