Ping-pong tables at work are one of the most essential tools for any business looking to fend off employees requesting salary reviews.

If you have ping-pong in the workplace, then you have a ready and relatable reason to reject, or not even have, basic pay rises to support your workforce.

This is particularly crucial during modern capitalism-driven cost of living crises, ensuring you don’t provide staff with wage increases so you can see them suffer in poverty.

In this guide, we explore the essential steps you must take to ensure you use ping-pong as a means to avoiding your greater responsibilities as an employer.

Ping-Pong or Pay Rises? The Case For Table Tennis as a Cure-All

sure babe keep telling yourself that pic.twitter.com/4Ad5UnlQfG

— Vivian (@muchnerve) May 23, 2022

During times of appalling cost of living crises, employees don’t want to think about money.

They want ping-pong tables to take their mind off not being able to afford the likes of food, rent, and other stupid stuff lazy inferior poor people lack the budgetary skills to fund.

It’s really a simple decision, when you think about it:

• Pay rises: Takes the stress off the ever-increasing cost of living and provides employees with a breather, so they might just be able to afford rent, food, bills, tax, and have a bit of spare cash leftover to indulge in some leisure activities. And by offering pay rises, they’ll realise it’s worthwhile staying long-term with your business as you’re receptive to them, consequently increasing your employee retention and saving your business money with ROI.
• Ping-pong table: Lets a handful of employees exchange idle chitchat for about 11 minutes during their lunch break.

It’s a no-brainer. Get your office decked out with a ping-pong table!

That way, when employees approach you for a pay rise, you can refer them to HR with a readymade generic email response explaining why money isn’t all that matters when you’re a boss earning a six figure salary and don’t like thinking about stupid, lazy, poor employees:

“Dear irrelevant employee,

Thank you for your request regarding our business policy towards salary reviews. Thank you for also highlighting the present cost of living crisis, which we have noted has forced a dozen of our employees onto living off foodbanks and who are currently in rent arrears and on the verge of homelessness.

Please note, we have a ping-pong table in the breakout area.

Kind regards,

Doreen McDoreenson, Head of HR at Stingy Bastard Enterprises Ltd.

With this template, you can easily bat away (as it were!) any request for a salary review.

A ping-pong table costs around £100.

If you have 10 employees asking for a £2,000 pay rise each year, that’s a saving of £19,900 you can use for your annual bonus to buy a fourth car.

With that in your pocket, you can ignore the frustrated fallout from employees leaving your business, the long-term drain on time, money, and other resources as you battle to replace them in an ultra-competitive recruitment market, and loads of negative Glassdoor reviews pointing out you’re trying to fob them off with whiff-whaff.

Ping-Pong Table Employment Laws to Know

Before instigating table tennis into your workplace, you must keep in mind the employment and health & safety laws surrounding this endeavour.

The Ping-Pong at Work Act 2010 is the legislation regarding the matter.

Additionally, there’s The Ping-Pong Health & Safety Act 2020 that was introduced (in 2020) following a spate of horrifying ping-pong related injuries in workplaces.

The Ping-Pong at Work Act 2010 states on page 2,011 in section 33 (a):

“Ping-pong tables at work brainwash your employees into a false sense of momentary satisfaction. It is a superb and reliable way to indoctrinate employees into thinking all is well with the world and their employer is a benign and magnanimous benefactor with their best interests at heart.

However, in the event you believe they are starting to see through this façade, you should immediately order in a pizza delivery to further bolster the image you give a toss about their general wherewithal.

Whilst they are distracted by free food, ensure you furtively move significant amounts of budget into your annual bonus. You have that £300,500 supercar to pay for, after all!”

Pizzas at work are governed by The Pizzas at Work Act 2012, which we shall document at a later dater.

However, it’s noteworthy under The Pizzas & Ping-Pong at Work Act 2016 that it’s illegal for you to mix the two activities together. Page 3,456 in section 31 (b) states:

“If your employees indulge in ping-pong and pizza consumption simultaneously, this can result in choking and employee-based cessation of life (i.e. death).

This can be of terrible concern for your annual overhead, as this cessation on being can lead to costly employment tribunals.

Your best course of action is to ban ping-pong during any pizza-based deliveries.

Should your employees whinge like little babies  about this development, simply threaten them with pay decreases and watch them cower like the pathetic subordinates they are.”

Remember, table tennis shouldn’t distract employees from their overall duty—to work harder than hard and make you increasingly rich whilst you lose track of reality.

If you believe ping-pong is lowering productivity due to ongoing tournaments and intense internal colleague rivalries, you have right to have the ping-pong table detonated.

Do note, under The Detonating Stuff at Work Act 1971 you should ensure no employees are near the explosion when it detonates.

Otherwise, they may lose one (or several) limbs.

This would then ensure they can no longer indulge in ping-pong usage, which would mean your salary review distraction technique is no longer effective.

Ultimately, that’ll lead to your worst nightmare—having to tell the truth about why you’re not offering pay rises.

May God have mercy on your soul…