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Study's Punch Line: Humor at the Office is Serious Business

livescience.com — "It's not just clowning around and having fun. It has meaningful impact on cohesiveness in the workplace and communication quality among workers," Robert said. "The ability to appreciate humor, the ability to laugh and make other people laugh actually has physiological effects on the body that cause people to become more bonded."

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 9, 2007

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  • inactive, on 11/09/2007, -1/+23Why isn't this common sense? Of course people work better together when they shoot the bull. Companies that crack down on work place interaction and humor (like my last job) shoot themselves in the foot.
  • indyGuy, on 11/09/2007, -1/+19"When people say to me, 'Would you rather be thought of as a funny man or a great boss?' My answer's always the same, to me, they're not mutually exclusive."
    - Michael Scott
  • CraigJ, on 11/09/2007, -2/+10Shut up and get back to work.
  • Damaso, on 11/09/2007, -0/+6Cause people have become too cautious in these days. All it takes is one bastard looking for an easy way out to take 'offense' from one of your jokes and its all over.
  • NinjaNoodles, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5Yeah, I mean it happens often here where I work, and we all get along real well, it's like a second family pretty much. I'd say even our productivity benefits. Morale is really high of course.
  • pasatiempos, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4I find that one of the reasons I spend so much time online is because in my workplace they have instilled this corporate barren wasteland of an atmosphere. Whenever some starts up a good discussion, a boss or his lackey comes in just to give us the evil eye. No "please be quiet", god forbid him joining in. He just comes in and stays standing there, going through his blackberry. Sucking the life out of the atmosphere.
  • accessviolation, on 11/10/2007, -0/+4It's Serious Business: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/b/b2/S ...

    I'm sorry, I had to. I accept my fate.
  • blakeage, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3You are the nagging critical voice that haunts the back of my mind all day long.
  • chris9902, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4No! really?
  • paulg2000, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3True, but there's a fine line. I find myself avoiding the guy who answers every question first with a sarcastic remark.
    Come to think of it, sometimes I'm probably that guy myself...
  • steelclash84, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2There's other reasons to engage in social banter in the work place. It reduces burn out. If people at my job (IT shop) had to stay at their desk except to goto the bathroom, I'm pretty sure there'd be cases of employees going postal.
  • amdahlj, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2Michael Scott FTW!
  • CheeseburgerBro, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2Quit screwing around. You kids are always screwing around.
  • Tyr7BE, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Yep. Same deal here. I don't mind being at work so much. I mean, I'd much rather be at home on any given day, but having good people around makes it alright. At my girlfriend's company they discourage humor. Even discourage interaction between employees. And it's MISERABLE there. Nobody enjoys their job.

    All you HR kids reading this, take note. The more people are allowed to be themselves without fear of retaliation by their employer, the happier they will be.
  • ninsei, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense
    "based on a strict construction of the term, is what people in common would agree: that which they "sense" in common as their common natural understanding"

    The only flaw in your argument is that the "common" does not make "sense" anymore. Common people are extremely nonsensical :) Otherwise I'm w/ you. How many more studies or articles do we have to write about the blatantly obvious? It's like the study done recently for millions that stated "Meeting are bad for your health". I think anyone that has more than one meeting a day at most could tell you that!
  • RichG13, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Shut it, Toby. Why do you always ruin a good time?
  • coyote1284, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1What does PC Load Letter mean?
  • homey007, on 11/10/2007, -0/+1I don't think humor is the only way to get a team to bond, but it's definitely 1 way. I personally think the people that I work with are bright and pretty cool in the sense that we can talk about anything and not really have to worry about not offending others. We have hour long debates on what the correct way to write a upper case cursive A is and we often go out for drinks and stuff.

    Play hallway sports definitely works too ;p
  • 1jaxstate1, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Well it works out well when the jokes are funny. But when your boss constantly tell ***** jokes, and you have to constantly have to give fake laughs, it turns things sour.
  • TheMidnight, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Yeah, it would help if my sense of humor didn't cause puppies to commit suicide. See? There it goes again.
  • rholland356, on 11/09/2007, -0/+0You know what's really fun as a manager? Do some stupid humor at a staff meeting. Make note of which suck-ups laugh at your lame jokes. Then, later on, those suck-ups will try to humor you with their own lame jokes. You MUST NEVER laugh at a subordinate's humor.
    Yes, indeed, that is some of the most fun you can have as a supervisor.
  • rholland356, on 11/09/2007, -0/+0Humor is so hard to do. It is best left to the pros. Instead of hiring management consultants and taking days off for physically risky team-building events, spend that money to hire comedians to come to your company once a week.
    Better yet, hire comedians to write individual performance evaluations...
  • coyote1284, on 11/12/2007, -1/+1I wouldn't say that I 'missed' your sarcasm.
  • TommyBoy919, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1At my office we mess around and goof off fairly often, but when we work, we WORK. Head down, no nonsense, whatever it takes to get the job done, work. I'll tell you what though, because of all the goofing off and messing around, anyone will do whatever it takes to help out anyone else. I think out success has a lot to do with the level of messing around that is permitted to keep the team working like a team.
  • accessviolation, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1Please quote more Office Space via internet forums. I haven't heard that movie quoted nearly enough. Now I like to read it in text form, rendering it even less funny.
  • elbowman, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2The fine line is that in the workplace humor must be fun for everyone. Sarcasm is not humor. Jokes that put others down are not humorous. Companies that find they must crackdown on the situation are probably responding to avoiding a situation where they could be sued. If your workers can laugh at situations with each other it can relieve tension and make work a place that people don't want to avoid.
  • foofightrs777, on 11/09/2007, -7/+5Bob Porter: We're gonna be getting rid of these people here... First, Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway.

    Now that's some office humor!
  • foofightrs777, on 11/09/2007, -10/+2Bob Porter: We're gonna be getting rid of these people here... First, Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway.

    Now that's some office humor.
  • chris9902, on 11/09/2007, -12/+2That joke was even funnier 3 years earlier when Ricky Gervais made it.

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