There are any number of classic jokes that make most of us laugh. We get old ones or new variations on a regular basis in email from friends, we forward them on, and keep the cycle of laughter moving throughout the world. As much as the storage and mail administrators might not like this, it's a great way to keep the mood light, share with friends, and enjoy your work a bit more.
I love watching The Office on TV and it's one of my wife's and my favorite shows each week. No, not the British version, the funny one shown in the US 🙂 (I have to make a few jokes about my colleagues in Cambridge now and again)
One of the interesting things with humor is that it's hard to define. And I think this might be the truest test of artificial intelligence at some point. If you've watched some of the Hollywood attempts over the years to explain humor to robots, you quickly realize that it's very difficult to do so. And if you add in the
fact that culture and experience plays a huge part in what we find funny, it's no wonder that we sometimes have trouble communicating humor to those we interact with.
Humor can be a great way to ease tension, reduce stress, make someone feel better (or yourself feel better) and it's a part of most people's lives. We enjoy a good joke or some comment that makes us smile. It's a welcome relief, especially when we are under a lot of strain.
But what's funny?
It's easy to have a joke be funny to one person and offensive to the next. In some ways that's what a lot of humor is built on, making fun of some group or event. If you're in the group or situation being made fun of, however, it's not likely to make you smile.
And that's the problem in many office workplaces today. As we get more and more diverse, what we find humorous (and offensive) diverges as well. All of that can cause problems or issues between groups of people.
Joking around with friends is something that I value in the workplace. It's good to kid around with those you see on a daily basis and make light of the tough situations we often find ourselves in. However it's also a place where we can easily offend or upset someone, creating a hostile workplace. Learning the boundaries of good workplace humor is a skill that is probably as important as many of the other communication skills that I, and others, often write about.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
The podcast feeds are now available at sqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.
or now on iTunes!
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Today's podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.
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