You can say a lot of things about OnMilwaukee.com, but you can never call us the typical corporate office. Whether it's the homemade bar in the corner, where we hold the occasional "brainstorming meeting," the semi-regular office dog running around our space, or more recently, the OMC Push-Up Club -- we're not your average staff of 15 working stiffs.
Never mind the tolerance of tattoos, piercings, singing aloud to the music in your iTunes library, or the occasional profane outburst when a project we're working on falls apart. It goes beyond the "emergency tequila," slippers in the winter and the Friday summer half days.
The Push-Up Club is a particularly ridiculous, but productive, example of why each of us wouldn't fare well in corporate America. It started about a month ago in our sales office, where our health-conscious employees, Steve and John, got the peer-pressure ball rolling. Now almost all of us, men and women alike, participate in this twice-daily routine, which gets a little harder each and every week.
This week, it's 38 push-ups in the morning, 38 in the afternoon. That's a whopping 76 push-ups per day. Creaking, complaining, sweating and suffering, we do them together, usually in a haphazard and loose circle around the floor of our office's common area.
And always, someone (frequently me), moans, "I hate this club," or "push-ups suck," yet day after day, we go back out there in our business-casual (and sometimes way more casual) attire, gradually groaning ourselves into shape.
It's funny how peer pressure works in our office -- but in a good way. Whereas the first and second rules of the Fight Club are that you do not talk about the Fight Club, the OMC Push-Up Club involves a lot of talking; not to mention e-mail forwards of proper push-up etiquette and words of encouragement.
The Friday push-up regiment is simple: just do as many as you can. For some of us (not me), that's 50. For others (also not me), that's 10. But as Johnny makes a point to say at the end of the week, "Just do your best."
It's an attitude exemplified in our non-traditional office … and one I don't remember floating around corporate America. Given the choice, I'll take the peer pressure, as well as the emergency tequila, every time.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
