During high school, I had a part-time job like most broke teenagers. On one day of my lousy part-time job, my co-worker and I shared a laugh about her children. My co-worker, a thirty-year-old single mom with four children, told me about how her son drove her babysitter insane. Since I could relate to her son (I gave numerous babysitters havoc as a child), I laughed at her babysitter situation. Immediately as I laughed, our boss, an old and miserable man, ran out from his closet of an office and admonished us for conversing. After his endless yelling, we became silent and continued working; even if a tornado blew through the office, we wouldn’t become noisy. Looking back at this particular moment, I still cannot understand why laughing is such a big problem within the office. Is humor really hostile in a workplace?

Since this is quite a thought-provoking question, others have had the same question. Many people encourage humor in the work environment, while some others, like my previous boss, think humor is a detriment from being on the job. However, most people haven’t experienced a work environment where the absence of humor was common, like I have. In a humorless work environment, the feelings of fear and depression occur much more than happiness and courage. Communication is a key skill needed for any job, but it is lacking in a humorless environment, since talking to each other is prohibited. Overall, a silent and serious workplace isn’t the best workplace. Will adding humor to a serious workplace truly increase success? Although others may find humor detrimental to a workplace, humor promotes success in a workplace by improving comfort, communication and overall happiness for workers. 

 Humor can always bring happiness, especially at the office. In one scary statistic by the Center for Disease Control, “25% of workers say that their job is the primary cause of stress in their lives, and 75% believe workers today grapple with more stress than those in the previous generations (Tappero). Clearly, workers need some relaxation at the job, since 1 out of 4 workers believe their job causes the most stress in their life. If a worker is stressed while at the job, this worker cannot be as productive as a relaxed and happy worker would be. When a person is relaxed, it is easier for them to complete a task, like a student taking a test. If one student studied for the test and another student didn’t study for the test, usually the prepared student will be calm and perform well on the test, while the unprepared student will stress during the test and perform worse on the test. To help workers stay calm and relaxed rather than stressed and worried on the job, humor can be added to the work environment. Humor’s purpose is to make people happy and relaxed through funny jokes or silly tactics, so why not add a few jokes here and there to improve the moods of workers. During an experiment involving humor in the workplace, Mir and Roy, two coworkers at a successful business, talked about how Roy left the door open, which led Mir to joke about how she thought he was going out to watch some television since the backdoor was open; this simple joke released some tension and fear from Mir (Marfo and Hill 16). As a human, Mir felt fear from the back door being open at the business, but didn’t want to admit this fact due to her current situation as a worker. To get her feelings of fear and anxiety about the backdoor being open, she told a silly joke about the backdoor being open to her coworker. This simple joke results in Mir relaxing and becoming happier along with her coworker, rather than obsessing over her fears about the backdoor. If she did obsess about her anxiety over the backdoor, she wouldn’t have completed her tasks as efficiently as usual since her main focus would be on the open backdoor. Through humor, workers like Mir can relax and perform up to their normal standards, as well as increasing comfortability.

While the office can be stressful, humor brings comfort to employees. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, humor allows workers to relax and brighten up, which leads to higher comfortability. However, making a joke can relax a worker, but still leave the worker uncomfortable. For instance, if a worker has a big meeting coming up, and a coworker tells them about a terrible meeting that occurred to him or her, this joke will relax the worker but still leave them uncomfortable. To make a comfortable environment for workers, humor needs to be added to the whole work environment, not just as a coworker chat. At an engineering company, Andrew Tarvin started a project he named “Project Awesomazation” and required each of his team members to fill out a “Which Stars Character Are You?” quiz, which led one of his coworkers to thank him for using humor because his humor made her enjoy work more and stop considering quitting her job (Tarvin).  Engineering is a tough, stressful career where anyone could easily be overwhelmed. Through his use of humor, Tarvin creates an atmosphere where the intimidation of a project disappears and the enjoyment of engineering reappears. He uses familiar topics like Star Wars to make his workers feel comfortable because it easily brings workers together and gets them on task better than a typical assignment would. If Tarvin just named his project 2.0, workers would already feel bored by the title of the project, but since he named his project “Project Awesomation”, workers start to feel energized just from an exciting title. While Tarvin’s company isn’t well-known, many well-known companies follow his use of humor in the workplace. “For example, Yahoo and IBM have crazy names like Kajagoogoo for their meeting rooms, Hulu hosts taco-eating contests and Airzooka tournaments, and Southwest chose the whimsical stock symbol LUV”; all companies acted similarly to how Tarvin handled his project (Beard). These activities promote workers to get involved at the job and overall enjoy work much more. When companies add humor to an entire work environment, the workers enjoy their jobs more than usual, and continue to complete tasks rather than stressing and considering quitting their jobs.

In an office, humor encourages communication, an essential skill for any career. In general, humor is a common part of life; even before we could talk, we could understand humor. Since humor is such an existent aspect of life, it teaches us basic comprehension like any book would. Humor allows enhancement of listening, understanding, and acceptance of messages, criticism without negative effects, and change in perspectives (Hima and Vijayaklakshmi 17). These significant aspects of communication are enhanced by humor, so using humor in the workplace must lead to overall better job performance. If workers use humor often in an office, they have an array of high communication skills and exercise these skills when they use humor. Even if some people believe that humor doesn’t lead to better job performance, “A Robert Half International Survey…found that 91% of executives believe a sense of humor is important for career advancement; while 84% feel that people with a good sense of humor do a better job” (Smith). Most bosses believe that humor and a good job performance have a positive correlation, so using humor can lead bosses to think workers will perform better than workers who don’t use humor, Even if a worker isn’t the best worker, using humor can cause a boss to perceive that worker as a great worker, since they can communicate easily. While humor can lead to a worker impressing a boss, humor also improves the communication between coworkers. At VU University Amsterdam, research found that when teams told more jokes, they also gave more supportive and constructive feedback to each other, which led to better work performance (Brooks). Through humor, coworkers can critique each other without leading to hurt feelings. For example, if a girl was wearing a dress that was too tight, but her mother said that the dress is too small for her daughter’s big personality, the message of the dress being too tight is still received, but not leaving the girl upset. By being able to criticize each other through humor, coworkers can perform better at the job by improving their weaknesses or correcting their mistakes. No one is perfect, and humor is able to make everyone aware but not upset of that fact. Communication skills improve with humor, leading to a good impression with the boss and a better feedback situation with coworkers, but some people do not believe this conclusion.

Although humor can improve the office environment, it can also be detrimental for the workplace at times. While humor can help workers in an office setting, this type of humor is only some of the types of humor known. Negative humor is very well-known; it can make or break a comedian’s stand-up act. There are two types of negative humor: self-defeating, where the jokesters ridicule themselves for others amusement, and aggressive, where jokesters belittle and mock others for amusement (Hima and Vijayalakshmi 14). For instance, if Sam, a male worker starts to joke with Darla, a blonde female, about how she must be stupid because she has blonde hair, nothing positive will result from this joke, other than Sam’s amusement. His joke would either make Darla feel insecure about her intelligence based on her hair color, or make Darla dislike Sam for saying something so hurtful and illogical; hair color has nothing to do with one’s intelligence. When using humor in the workplace, negative humor is easily used even though it is hurtful. However, this doesn’t mean that positive humor can’t be used in the same workplace. During an experiment in a typical workplace, the results displayed that “the amount of positive overweighs negative humor used in the [work environment]” (Marfo and Hill 21).  While negative humor is hurtful, the positive humor usually occurs in higher quantity, resulting in a more positive work environment. The positives can cancel out the negatives and add more, leaving a more positive situation, like a math equation. Although the risk of misusing humor exists, if a person just uses humor every day, he or she has a good shot of creating a positive effect rather than a negative effect on the workplace.

In the workplace, humor is an essential way to succeed. Humor leads to workers’ overall happiness due to its relaxing and relieving nature. Workers feel more comfortable at the job when humor is involved because humor makes the intimidation of a job disappear by making the job fun rather than stressful. Communication skills of workers improve when humor is used since humor creates an easy way for feedback. Humor does have negative types, but the positive humor will overpower the negative humor in a workplace. With all these significant aspects, humor must lead to a company’s success. So, if you are reading this essay in a tiny office full of silence and sadness, like numerous workers around the world, add some humor into your job. Say a daily joke to a coworker, give a silly name to a project, bring ridiculous slippers to wear at work. Stop conforming to what society expects of a worker and become the worker that innovates and excites the workplace; humor is just a stepping stool to help climb this mountain.