Can we (still) make jokes at work?

There are many edgy jokes in OSS 117, a comedy featuring Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a ridiculously arrogant and chauvinistic secret agent in the 1960s. “The idea is that we’ll work together, as equals,” his female counterpart – and an elite colonel in the Israeli army – tells him. To which de La Bath replies with the smuggest of smirks: “We’ll see about that when there’s something heavy that needs lifting!”

Why does the joke still get a laugh, in spite of, or rather, because of, its terrible taste?  Perhaps because we all know it’s of an endangered kind. In a world of good intentions (some would say, political correctness), old fashioned wisecracks are inevitably losing ground. But isn’t it humour in general that’s now being threatened in the workplace? When etiquette takes precedence over real skill, falling flat can not only cost you credibility; it can also hurt others and call to mind darker times, like those satirised in films like OSS 117, when old macho types could openly demean talented female employees. But does that mean we should stop joking at the office altogether?

‘Daring to make a joke in a Zoom meeting is riskier than doing so around the coffee machine’

It’s a fact: offices aren’t as funny as they used to be. First, because there are no longer any real offices per se: with remote work, opportunities to clown around are becoming more rare. Daring to make a joke in a Zoom meeting is riskier than doing so around the coffee machine: behind a computer screen, the spark of irony in your eye can go unnoticed, which can lead to serious misunderstandings – not to mention the cruel ambiguity of emails and text messages. Justin Kruger (the inventor of the Dunning-Kruger effect) has shown that jokes in emails are seldom understood, and that we tend to overestimate other people’s ability to pick up on our sarcasm, which can cause us problems in a professional setting. One study suggests that we now need emojis to show that we’re joking and that without them the other person could easily take us literally.

But humour at work is also dearly missed. According to one LinkedIn survey, six French people out of ten say they would like their colleagues to have a laugh more often. Nearly 80% of the working professionals surveyed said humour was underestimated and under-valued in the workplace.

Does humour at work need rescuing? And if so, what role can it really play in the world of professionalism and productivity, which is anything but funny?

The uses of irony

Let’s start by recalling the meaning of irony, as understood by the Greeks: the eirôneia practised by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues involved feigning ignorance in order to get others to become aware of their own prejudice and in doing so, move closer to the truth. This irony isn’t about making assertions but questioning everything, including our certainties. In this sense, irony should be welcomed at work, where the words of experts and leaders tend to go unquestioned and employees can be impressed by jargon. It’s here, in this world of excessive seriousness, that irony can play the role of safeguard. There’s nothing like a sharp witticism to sober up an executive committee drunk on its own ambitions. Say they want to launch a product that’s useless: a joke can get the message across without confronting the strategy’s proponents head-on. Irony is the weapon of the sceptic, those who won’t be fooled by a glitzy PowerPoint and like to remind others of the importance of confronting reality. It shakes up our prejudices and awakens our critical spirit – a welcome tool in the herd-like atmosphere of the corporate world.

‘Thanks to irony, journeys come to an end and problems let themselves be circumscribed’

—Vladimir Jankélévitch

Another aspect of irony was highlighted by the German romantics. Schlegel said poets are carried by the “divine breath of irony”, a feeling that “soars over everything and infinitely surpasses everything that is limited.” An art of paradox, the irony of the romantics involved whimsically combining elements of reality to renew one’s vision. “Irony is the power to play, to fly in through the air, to juggle with bits of content either to deny them or recreate them,” Vladimir Jankélévitch explains in a 1936 essay on the subject. By distancing reality, it gives us the feeling of having control over it. “Thanks to irony, journeys come to an end and problems let themselves be circumscribed,” he adds. At work, those who distinguish themselves through their wit (or what Voltaire called Witz, a term the German romantics loved) points to the ability to see beyond things and view them differently; and in doing so, stumble upon game-changing ideas: by taking a higher view of the world, we’re better able to reinvent it!

So let’s not be quick to judge the office clown: they might have read the romantics and decided to emulate them by seeing themselves as God’s equal and nurturing their creativity like a poet. But to demonstrate their master of reality in all its complexity, they still need to use the right type of humour: there’s a big difference between reacting with subtle irony to a new situation by making a thought-provoking quip and clowning around or pulling pranks without any connection to the situation at hand, like one of the Marx Brothers. Not every joker is a romantic demiurge!

The laughter of the powerful, and of the weak

But let’s come back down to earth for a minute: there’s another virtue of humour that is perfectly prosaïc. Apart from the benefits for our cardiovascular health, it could also help defuse tension. According to 69% of the employees surveyed by LinkedIn, jokes contribute significantly to a relaxed work environment. Say the atmosphere is tense ahead of the annual report: a good old pun can suffice to release everyone’s tension. This might be something to consider next time you see a colleague consumed by stress: when a client is putting them under too much pressure, an edgy double entendre can be all you need to remind them of the absurdity of taking one’s job too seriously. Humour is useful because it testifies to our need to adopt a healthier relationship to work. Allowing ourselves a bit of levity could be a vital reflex in an age of burnouts, when we’re expected to give everything at work.

Humour can also help strengthen the cohesion of the group by reinforcing its members’ complicity. Nothing brings people together like a scathing quip about the boss’ attire. The parody of power is “carnavalesque” in the sense defined by literary critic Mikhaïl Bakhtine: during public festivities, the masses used to mock the king and the rich and powerful, to temporarily escape their yoke.

‘Comedy can only begin at the point where our neighbour’s personality ceases to affect us’

—Henri Bergson

Problems arise when irony reinforces power relationships instead of subverting them. In his essay on Laughter (1900), philosopher Henri Bergson explains that the latter is triggered by “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. We laugh when a colleague trips up, because the loss of balance reduces them to inert matter; or when people express themselves using clichés, as if they were mere automata. And this is where humour can easily  be used as a tool of domination. To mock someone’s accent or way of speaking (“have you noticed how Kevin always ends his sentences with ‘okay’?”) is to imply that you belong to a shared, privileged social class, which strengthens its ties by conniving to make fun of outsiders. And so we willingly mock those who don’t share the social codes or etiquette of the dominant culture. In the French film The Taste of Others, a small business owner falls prey to this phenomenon when he’s sitting in a café with a group of actors and art critics, who start making up cultural references without him knowing, to highlight what they see as his intellectual inferiority... As Bergson further points out, “comedy can only begin at the point where our neighbour’s personality ceases to affect us.”

The philosopher saw laughter as a corrective force when society “goes astray”: it brings dreamers back onto the straight path. Bergson offers an acute description of students’ arrival in France’s most prestigious schools: “When the candidate has passed the fearsome entrance exam, they still have to pass more tests: those prepared for them by the most senior students, to bring them in line with the new society they are entering; to soften their character, as they say.” Any executive who has graduated from a top business school will be familiar with this Bergsonian laughter, this social bullying: when student groups pride themselves in all kinds of pranks, it’s not really with the aim of creating a better atmosphere, but to force everyone into the same mould.   

Humour to be handled with care

It’s easy to fall from buffoonery into vexation, and that’s why humour must be handled with a degree of precaution. One way to check if your company is using it properly is to ask yourself if everyone is allowed to indulge in it equally: when the boss alone takes the liberty of making jokes about someone, harassment is often just around the corner. The “right to humour” is also unfairly distributed between men and women, because the use of irony can also be a way of seizing power – an attitude which, in women, tends to be associated with a lack of sympathy. In her essay The Laughter of Women (in French, 2021), Sabine Melchior-Bonnet explains that women were long kept away from humour. A funny woman was seen as lustful and threatening. And this cliché persists: for example, the Miss France beauty pageant doesn’t just stipulate that candidates should be single and childless, but that they should also refrain from using irony. Where attractive men are typically portrayed as being funny and powerful, women are supposed to be pretty and reserved – and so she must be careful not to make too many jokes in meetings, lest her wit threaten the manliness of her male colleagues! If humour is a work tool like any other, it should be accessible to all, rather than monopolised by a few alpha males.

‘We tend to seek refuge in irony when we’ve given up defending our values’

Let’s also keep in mind that humour can be a slippery slope which can lead us to not taking anything seriously anymore. This is the attitude of the cynic, which often conceals what the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch called a “disappointed moralism”: we tend to seek refuge in irony when we’ve given up defending our values. To truly engage, we must take on the risk of being disappointed by reality – and therefore drop the shield of irony we too easily use to avoid taking responsibility. In other words, the attitude of the pathologically ironic estranges them from their own life and renders them incapable of engaging fully in anything. To take one’s life – and one’s work – seriously is to allow oneself the possibility of finding fulfilment in it.

Does that mean we can’t make a joke? That we should cloak ourselves in the austerity of our moral ambitions and frown upon the slightest expression of cheekiness in the office? Far from it. We don’t have to choose between the posture of the eternal party-pooper, the relentless clown, or the disillusioned cynic. It’s the intention behind your humour rather than its precise form or frequency that will define your own style. The most subtle sense of humour can be deep and light-hearted, kind and hilarious at the same time. Like when we make a self-deprecating joke to put a shy colleague at ease or point out a political issue by picking up on a comical detail…

“Funniness without second thought isn’t ironic, it’s just buffoonish,” Jankélévitch said. To help you navigate the quandary of office jokes, remember that real humour meets a moral requirement: to elevate ourselves, not put each other down!

Picture © Haley Lawrence / Unsplash