Posts Tagged fun
The Man Without Humor
Posted by admin in Office Humor on January 5, 2010
April fool’s day is a favorite day for some, because there are many funny jokes that can be played. But when you are working for ‘The Man’ humor can be unacceptable. The workplace has become a controversial place for funny jokes, because what is funny to one person can be considered an attack by another. Finding humor at another person’s expense can cause many stressful days at work or even many lawsuits.
Many companies hold informational meeting on not practicing office humor, because they don’t want any of there workers to be offended. However, at time companies can cross the line on what is acceptable and not acceptable. Part of the problem with telling a person that funny jokes or humor is not acceptable is that if a person can not enjoy themselves at work the workplace will become uninviting and the workers unhappy.
‘Night Court’ was a sitcom that came out quite a few years ago. The judge on the show was always having fun, but playing practical jokes occasionally got him in trouble. However, most of the time the judge’s antics allowed him to see a larger scope of the people he met and he was able to help them to better their lives. A saying that many companies need to learn is the ‘a little levity never hurt’. Allowing personnel the opportunity to send jokes through email and find humor in some of the bad things that may happen in the office can help to handle stress and bring a better camaraderie between the workers.
Where the line needs to be drawn on funny jokes and humor is if the joke shows a racial or gender bias or if the joke is intended to harm another or cause a person to be made to look bad (especially in the eyes of their superiors). Harmful jokes or humor should never be acceptable in the workplace. Every individual should be responsible for their actions and take steps to know what is acceptable and will be found as a funny joke. If a joke is questionable the individual should recognize that that type of humor should be refrained from.
A company does have the responsibility to uphold its reputation and should educate its employees on acceptable humor and what would be considered a not so funny joke. However, companies should also take steps to allow their employees a fun work place. Part of this may include allowing a worker to use email to send jokes to people they know. One suggestion for the workplace may be to have a ‘no joke’ list and if people do not want to receive jokes through email they can place themselves on the list.
Humor and jokes should be allowed in the work place to allow a happier and more jovial work environment. A funny joke can cheer up a person’s day and a little humor can relieve stress. If an individual is responsible to not offend a person and the company encourages their work force to be happy working for ‘The Man’ wouldn’t be so bad.
Humor as a Stress Reducer and Energizer
Posted by admin in Office Humor on November 20, 2009
Work is often associated with stress, and we know that stress is one of the main causes of illness, absenteeism, and burnout. Humor is a great stress reliever because it makes us feel good, and we can’t feel good and feel stress simultaneously. At the moment we experience humor, feelings like depression, anger, and anxiety dissolve.
Humor and, its partner, laughter also reduce stress by activating the physiological systems including the muscular, respiratory, cardiovascular, and skeletal. In fact, we may even lose muscle control, as many of us have, when we laugh so hard that we fall down or wet our pants. Laughter has been labeled a jogging and juggling of the internal organs. When we laugh we feel physically better, and after laughter we feel lighter and more relaxed.
In addition, humor provides a psychological stress reducer as it snaps our thinking to another channel. Norman Cousins called it trainwrecks of the mind. One of the characteristics of humor is that it involves incongruity. We find things humorous when they are incongruous or mismatched. Good jokes guide us down one path only to suddenly track us onto another. The tracking is what we call the punch line. As we are tracked over, our thinking shifts and, in fact, breaking the mind set of the thinking leads to increased creativity.
Consider the story of the midwestern farmer crossing Harvard square searching for the library. He approaches a stately looking gentleman, who happens to be a Harvard English professor, and he asks, “Excuse me sir. Can you tell me where the library is at?” The professor looks somewhat disdainfully and replies, “At Harvard we do not end sentences with prepositions.” After a pause the farmer turns back to the professor and asks, “Well then, can you tell me where the library is at…Asshole.” In this joke we are guided down one path and suddenly tracked over to another. The incongruity is what we experience as humorous.
We know that all good lecturers have many jokes, stories, and anecdotes that are shared in order to command attention and energize the audience. Humor wakes us up and increases our attending. An office bulletin board loaded with cartoons, one liners, jokes, pictures, etc. is one way to invite humor into the workplace. A few moments of humor at work can lead to increased productivity as the newly energized employee returns to his or her task.
If you are having a bad day and would like to brighten it up, all you might have to do is to read a joke a funny story. There are plenty of resources on the web, including humor blogs, Digg-Humor, Funny-Or-Die and Fun’N’Love.
Humor is a major career asset, so let’s be serious about humor and use humor to lighten our seriousness in the workplace. As we increase our personal humor quotient and spread our humor contagiously to others, we will begin to see the “lite” at the end of the tunnel.