Here’s a typical example of workplace humor. What do you make of it?
Mandy’s deliberate misunderstanding of the word ‘flexible’ was clever, and most likely you can see some humor, but not as much as Ted and Mandy saw. A key feature of any humor is identification. To find something funny, we need generally to identify with it, to have an underlying sympathy with the viewpoint of the humorist(s).
With workplace humor , this sympathy is often conveyed by the common phrase you had to be there, which suggests that the humor comes out of directly observing events rather than having them reported to you by a third party (in this case, the authors of this book). Also, you might appreciate the humor if you had some identification, understanding and/or sympathy with the people involved and the situation, for example knowing and feeling empathy for Ted and/or Mandy and their relationship.
In other words, workplace humor is highly contextual, and much of it can only be understood and felt by those with a good appreciation of the background situation, particularly past events and interpersonal relationships. For that reason, do not expect the many anecdotes in this book to be side-splittingly funny you had to be there, you had to know the people: you weren’t, and you didn’t!
Whether or not the Ted-Mandy-Josie interaction was funny, was it good or bad? Did it help those involved? They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Were some of them laughing just because others were? And what about getting their jobs done? What about the XYZ Hydraulics organization that was paying them? Wasn’t the humor distracting them from their work, slowing them down, reducing productivity?
If there had been a manager there, would s/he have liked the exchange or found it silly and unproductive? Quite likely the manager would scarcely have noticed it, or would have thought, ‘That’s fine, people joke around a lot at work, it makes them feel good, it does no harm. It was the starting point for what may be a productive meeting between Ted and Mandy, it showed a good positive work relationship between the three of them and it took almost no time at all’.
On the other hand, humor is not always as straightforward as we may think. Sometimes the meaning of humor is a little more mysterious, even sinister. Why did Josie initially seem surprised by Mandy’s joke about ‘the splits’? And what do we make of Ted’s vague remark that ‘there’s a lot about us you don’t know?’ Is he simply saying that he and Mandy are a good team, is he hinting at a closer relationship or trying to develop one? Is it ok for him to move closer to Mandy to dramatize the relationship he seems to be hinting at? Alternatively, is he simply putting Josie in her place, by implying that she is an ‘outsider’ to the Ted-and-Mandy ‘in-group’?
Humor can go wrong. Consider another scenario in the Ted-Mandy-Josie story:
What is ‘only a joke’ to one person can be offensive, insulting or threatening to another. Ted’s remark, ‘the splits, eh? That’s a sight I’d like to see! I’d love to see your split!’ may have been a piece of innocent banter. But it could alternatively be viewed as a sexual innuendo or an expression of Ted’s inner aggressiveness, or it might even actually have been one of those. What seems like an innocent joke may not be innocent to everyone. This second scenario resulted in Mandy being uneasy, Josie suspicious and Ted angry—none of them emotions conducive to harmonious or productive working relationships.
Workplace Humor: The Good and the Bad
Humor is nowadays a universal part of our working lives. It occurs in all countries and all cultures. It occurs in all settings: in relationships, in family life, in leisure pursuits. We even use humor introspectively, joking to ourselves when we are alone. So it isn’t surprising that in the nearly 50% of our waking hours when we are working for our living, humor is typically to the fore, part and parcel of our working relationships with others.
Workplaces nowadays tend to be fairly functional. They need to be effective. They need to be efficient. This is achieved by the textbook combinations of people, money, resources, strategies, competitive advantage, workforce commitment, skills and so on. But humor? Humor, surely, can only be a distraction. What is workplace humor for? What can it do that makes the organization better at what it does?
Workplace humor is usually, though not always, good for us. We need it! Consider what happens when it is denied us. Both authors of this book have experience in humor repression:
And so, our experiences have convinced us that humor in organizations is a gift, a practice that, done the right way, makes work a pleasure and probably enhances performance. Humor provides a lighter side to the serious business of work. It gets us laughing—and therefore feeling good—even if we are not personally involved in the joke. It lightens the load, makes the hours pass more quickly and turns work relationships into friendships through the sharing of laughter. Good-natured workplace banter, shared in-jokes, gentle laughter at our own minor foibles and those of our colleagues, shared jokes about our organization’s bosses or bureaucracy or advertising or customers: these are part and parcel of most working lives. Laughter is inherently pleasurable. It makes us feel good, not only about ourselves but also about the colleagues we are sharing it with. Thus, most of the time, humor appears to be a positive experience for us and a productive one for our organizations. Working relationships prosper; morale rises; productivity benefits; everyone wins.
At the same time, humor can go badly wrong, even in the workplace, as it did in the second Ted-Mandy-Josie scenario. If staff overindulge in joking, working time can vanish and productivity may fall. One person’s humor can be deeply offensive or hurtful or just plain boring to another, damaging the very relationships it is intended to foster and leading to ill-feeling and mistrust. And, in these ‘politically correct’ times, humor that may have seemed acceptable a decade or two ago may no longer be so.
While we can’t know for sure, we are guessing that the man responsible for this ‘jo...
