Spend enough time in a UConn Health building and there’s a good chance you’ll cross paths with a tall, lanky, bearded fellow in a tradesman’s uniform… and he’ll try to make you laugh. Known to many as “The Joke Guy,” Cliff Williams joined UConn Health 16 years ago for a job that, despite our comical encounters with him, is actually pretty serious. He lives in Farmington with his wife, Joan, who also works at UConn Health, as a business services manager in the UConn School of Dental Medicine.

What is your day job?

My job here is not being the joke man, that’s for sure. I’m a QCW electrician. QCW stands for “quality craft worker”—I didn’t dream up the silly name. In electrical, we’re responsible for maintaining the reliability of the electrical system in the Health Center, all the buildings here, and the outbuildings. We have certain maintenance things we do on a regular basis and also sometimes we’re scrambling because there’s a problem somewhere that needs to be corrected. It could be lights not working, or outlets not working, and we also assist the plumbers and the HVAC guys when they have electrical problems with their equipment. There’s a lot of stuff here, and no matter how well you maintain anything, stuff can break. That’s why we’re here, to try to keep the lights on and the power flowing for all of the patients and staff here.

A lot of folks here recognize you not as the electrician but as the tall bearded guy who tells jokes. How did that come to be?

I think this has been going on for maybe the last five or six years. Most of my jokes are puns. I happen to enjoy puns very much. I could have gotten that appreciation from [Hartford radio legend] Bob Steele. I admired his sense of humor and he did not tell any what he called “parlor” jokes, and I always liked that. There are people who see me and want me to stop and tell them a joke. They know that I’m normally good for a joke.

One thing that’s interesting is, I have a colleague, George Kazimierczak, also a QCW electrician. Sometimes George has a beard, and he’s tall and thin, and people often confuse the two of us. From time to time, people are stopping George in the elevator or walking down the hall and they are demanding a joke from him. Sometimes they don’t want to believe that he’s not me.

And I should point out, my corny jokes, women seem to appreciate them more than men. I could be in the elevator, and a woman will look at me and say, “Well?” And I say, “Excuse me? Well what?” And she’ll say “Aren’t you The Joke Guy? I’m waiting.” So to some degree, sometimes I’m on the spot to perform.

I’ve told well over a hundred jokes, but I don’t remember the ones I used last week.

What’s one of your favorite jokes from over the years, that you can remember?

What’s the difference between a well-dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle?

Attire.

Does it ever happen that people see you and try to avoid you because they don’t want to hear a joke?

No… oh, wait a minute. There’s one doctor, a researcher, Ph.D., he sees me and tries to avoid me. There is at least one person who tries to avoid me.

When you’re not at work, what do you like to do?

We enjoy very much working in our garden. Joan enjoys her flowers very much, and I’m in charge of the vegetable garden. We enjoy our annual vacation to Mexico in the winter, because it’s very nice to get out of here, and it’s much too cold to do yardwork anyway. Tulum, Mexico, has been our favorite place for eight or more years. And I do speak a little German. I actually know three and a half German jokes that I can tell, for what that’s worth.

Do you have a joke you’d like to leave us with?

What do dogs do that people step in?

Pants!

---