When I present on humor and the workplace there’s one question that always comes up. What are the rules for using humor? What’s acceptable and what’s not? The rule that HR of course wants us to follow is that we neither tease, use sarcasm, nor go anywhere within 100 miles of anything remotely adjacent to offensive. This isn’t bad advice and it makes sense in today’s age of heightened worry about offense. But as with many rules there is a chance we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Or perhaps riffing on the Mardi Gras theme, it’s like throwing the King Cake out before getting the baby. (Mardi Gras is tomorrow as of the time of this writing.)
I don’t think, teasing, sarcasm, or oven offensive humor is always out of place in the workspace. There’s even some small bits of research that shows some forms of “aggressive” humor are part of being in a close knit group. What I often say is that such humor has got to be measured in its use. What one can joke and tease about varies quite a bit from place to place and person to person. Sometimes even the same person may accept a joke at one time, but not another. I hesitate to offer any kind of general rule because humor is such a variable thing and influenced by so many factors that even the best of us will err. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways we can better understand such humor and how it works.
What I want to offer as a way to get us thinking about how and when we can use such humor are some stories that can help us think about propriety, about how and when we might be able to tease and use rough and tumble jokes. I have space for only one really, but hopefully you can enjoy the story, Better still, maybe we can find ways to relax the restrictions we have in our use of such humor in our lives.
So here’s the story. We recently took a trip to Amsterdam and we came home with some nice cheeses. I reached out to some friends, a couple we know, and invited them to come over and share some with us. Over a text message I said “We’ve got some wonderful cheese that we should share with some great people. And since we don’t know any, we figured we’d ask you and the wifey.” I thought it was a funny little tease and a nice use of paraprosdokian. (I learned a new word!) A few minutes later my friend replies “The wifey says since we haven’t gotten any better offers today, I guess we’ll come and eat your cheese.” What an absolutely brilliant come-back. It one-ups my tease, makes fun of me in the same way I made fun of them, and I loved it the moment I read it. Well done!
Am I annoyed? Absolutely, he beat me at my own game. I’m the one who goes on about humor, who studies it, and he gave as good or better than he got. It’s so good in so many ways. He took my invitation to tease and went with it and punched right back. He took the tease as an invitation to play, which it was. This is something we do all the time with our friends (or perhaps men more so than women) I felt no need to respond to hum, because it was good. We played, had a bit of fun and we’d see each other later in the day. He got the last word, but that’s not the point. Good teasing, even aggressive teasing that could or might offend is often not about being mean, it’s about having fun and being playful. It’s what researchers call prosocial teasing. And since we’re friends, we’re going to have ample opportunity to play later on. That’s what’s really important. The play doesn’t end. It just takes a backseat to the other stuff we have to do—like share some nice cheese with friends, hang out, and play some games.
Hopefully you can start to see some way to understand how and when one can use certain forms of humor. So I invite you to look into ways to playfully tease with the folks you know. Hopefully you can have as much fun as I do. The tease I began with could be taken as an insult, but my friend knows better. He knows me, we’ve established that we can play in these ways, so such humor isn’t totally forbidden. If I did this too often, it would likely cause problems, but I don’t cause I know that. Also, I doubt I’d ever take it to that level.
So cheesy.