The Swear Jar

To maintain civility and curtail the sometimes cursive language that our development teams occasionally use to express their sentiments regarding a finger accidentally stapled through, for example, or a job too well done, the preventive measure of a Swear Jar has been introduced to represent an incentive for not cursing. At least, not out loud, or in a way others might understand.

What is a Swear Jar? The term deserves some explanation.

A swear jar is basically a deterrent for swearing, cursing, or sharing so-called obscenities with other's in hearing range. And it is, literally, a jar.

Whenever one swears, they put money in the jar. It's as simple as that. It's a popular preventive measure for families with teenagers, careless mechanics with sensitive clientele, and deadline heavy code warriors with a short temper and a long to-do list. Our developers have found it a useful way to collect money to celebrate each other's birthdays, and without which, the ears in the walls would be burning.

We've also built a recreation room to alleviate the tensions that rise from working full time, and to encourage colleagues to take a few minutes during the work-day or after hours to play pool or a little table football for some friendly competition, not to mention the kitchen and serve-yourself bar.

Everyone knows by now that balance in the workplace is necessary. Psychological and physical well-being are no longer at the bottom of the stack, they are amongst the top priorities and provisions of a company's human resources division, and Vega believes and acts on that philosophy. We are not just a web development company, we are a community. We create and sustain careers for mathematicians, engineers, artists, and hospitality professionals, to name just a few. When we work, we have to deliver the best that we are able, and the company strives to keep everyone on board in top shape.

So, a recreation room, and birthday parties to celebrate there resourced from a swear jar, because this is the new work world, and we're all pleased participants. 

There is a Danish word that describes happiness in the work place: Arbejdesglaede.

It is currently painted at the top of the door that leads to the San Francisco office and the recreation room. The word arbejdesglaede asserts that a positively charged workplace creates the allusive element of success we believe all businesses, by definition of being in business, seek to attain. Success does not create happiness, rather, happiness creates success.  A happier person is more productive, more creative, more motivated, and more resilient to the occasional arrows that sling in from out nowhere and cause us to speak out in ways that fill up things like swear jars.

One of our goals is, in fact, an empty swear jar. We look forward to the day when we cannot put up any more parties with cash earned from a colleagues' worn out sense of humor, and we're all sitting around quietly without cupcakes, waiting for someone to come up with the next brilliant idea.