‘YOU will spend most of your life at work. So it’s important to have a job that you enjoy.’

I still remember my dad’s words when I was a kid, trying to work out what career to aim for. Eventually, inspired by a journalist who gave a talk at school, I decided that was the job for me.

It’s a job I’ve had for a long time now - has it made me happy? On the whole, yes. It’s what I wanted to do from the age of 14, and I still think there’s nothing else quite like it. And although no job is a bed of roses, I’ve had happier times in journalism than I did working in a shampoo factory when I was 19.

But surely, no matter how much you enjoy your job, or indeed your life, it’s simply not possible, or normal, to be happy all of the time.

And it’s not always appropriate. This week I had a good day at work; I was back in the office, I had a pleasant meeting with someone in the morning, and overall it felt like a productive day. I felt quite Zen, for a rainy Monday. But later in the evening I watched the news and went to bed feeling grim; my head filled with images of bewildered Ukrainian families pouring into Poland.

We are complex creatures, with a range of emotions. We need them, to deal with all that life throws at us. If we’re going through a challenging time, or we encounter something upsetting, it’s perfectly normal to feel stressed, anxious or sad. It would be weird if we didn’t. Happiness isn’t helpful in some situations.

And who on earth wants to be a happy bunny all the time? Well, for a Happiness Officer it presumably goes with the job description.

It’s a thing now, a Happiness Officer. It’s been around in America for a while, as some strand of HR as far as I can tell, and now it’s set to become part of the corporate wellbeing process over here. It is, says someone at a top London law firm who has pledged to introduce the role, a chance to create the world’s “most vibrant, happy and uplifting place”.

Imagine the pressure of working at such a place! Being vibrant, happy and uplifting all the time sounds exhausting. I’d never get anything done. And how irritating to be surrounded by smug, happy people when you just want to let off steam with a perfectly healthy whinge. A colleague and I used to moan regularly about a daily news analysis page that was a demanding, time-consuming addition to our little features team. When the page was eventually dropped, we felt strangely empty. Lunch breaks weren’t the same. “What are we going to moan about now?” we sighed, eating our baked potatoes in eerie silence.

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/leisure/19954712.opinion-slightly-obsessed-jane-mcdonalds-yorkshire/

Mental health is, of course, an important issue in the workplace, and employers have a duty of care. With increasing numbers of workers suffering stress and burn-out, wellbeing matters hugely. But a Happiness Officer? Really? It smacks of corporate teams who whoop and holler through bonding sessions to Heather Small’s Proud on dress-down Fridays. I’d rather be back in the Dickensian shampoo factory.

I don’t need eternal happiness for job satisfaction. It wouldn’t really help in my line of work. Last week, in one afternoon, I interviewed Johannes from Strictly, which was joyful as he was a delight, and half an hour later I was talking to a woman about her unbearable grief when her husband died. Later, I was editing a fun account of a gran’s slimming journey, an inspiring article on a refugees’ choir and a moving feature about three brothers killed at war within months of each other. Along the way were the distractions and irritations of an average working day.

My job is many things, and is as frustrating as it is fulfilling. That’s what work generally is. It’s important to have a caring ethos in the workplace, but a box-ticking team leader with a Stepford Wife smile monitoring office happy levels would be utter misery.