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by tetraca 1510 days ago
In that case, I don't think the idea of joking was the problem so much as shoving politics into the workplace.
2 comments

The problem is that what you think is funny may be uncomfortable to a other people, and for some reason, it's always the funny guy who thinks that the onus is on everyone else to shift their behavior to accommodate his comfort.

It gets worse when half the team is laughing, and the other half are praying for you to be struck dumb already.

Man it just sounds like such a miserable drone workplace to have no one laughing.

Giving up on laughter seems a "baby with the bathwater" approach to inclusiveness. I suppose being miserable is rather inclusive though :/

It's really not that hard to keep your forms of merriment clean and appropriate, if you are a generally good-natured person that likes who you work with and wants to make them laugh.

That said, there are certainly people that can only perform humor as a zero-sum game. But in my experience they are also generally the kind of people that subject their coworkers to uncomfortable conversations in a myriad of other ways.

Or not being able to pivot when your jokes aren't well received.