Workplace Haiku

When you are able to work someplace where you can have some fun with the people you work with you usually end up coming up with inside jokes and other fun things to do. Along with the previously discussed “pop time” one of the things that we did in my first full engineering job was to write workplace haiku.

I am still searching for the lists of haiku that we wrote those many, many years ago and if I find them then I will work on posting some of the better ones. However, this blog gives me an ability to resurrect my haiku skills and attempt to create a couple of haiku per week.

Now you may be asking yourself – why haiku? Actually, let’s take a step back and first cover: what is haiku? According to wikipedia, haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that is structured over 17 syllables with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third line. (WPC Score: 22). While the wikipedia description has much more detail regarding this art form including seasonal imagery and the juxtaposition of ideas, when we wrote it we were focused on two things: the correct form (5-7-5) and the workplace.

As to the question, why haiku? To be honest, I am not sure that I remember the origins. I do know that one of the group had a desktop zen garden. I even found this link about a home office sandbox that I sent him commemorating that first small desk sandbox. However we ended up on haiku, it was a great way to express creativity, frustration, and poetry all in a short and sweet message (although sometimes bittersweet).

So as this is my soapbox to the world, it is time to dust off those old poetry skills and start writing some of these fantastic little snippets of engineering life again. To start, I am going to re-use one that I found in an email from many years ago. This one was alongside the home office sandbox link:

And now it is time for some new ones. Please don’t judge too harshly, it has been years since I exercised my haiku skills. I promise to keep working to get better through!

And the last one for the day: