a love letter to humor and its different forms
office humor.
The casual conversation about how it was supposed to be warm by now, but the weather keeps surprising us, or the smile about how the week flew by. A polite chuckle, some eye contact but not too much, and a final call to action to get to work. People hate on office humor, but I think it’s a necessary ingredient for our day-to-day relationships, and should be a part of any public environment we move in.
In an environment like an office, there’s pretty much no expectation for deep human connection with one another. We know that we each have our own lives and non-work friends. But regardless, we still seek community, warmth, and respect from one another. When we’re walking into the office in the morning and come into the presence of our office mates, we want to feel acknowledged. Even more, we want to leave the office fulfilled, not empty inside after a day of only saying hi to each other and nothing more. Even in a platonic environment like a work office, we need some way of being meaningfully present with one another.
The problem is how to build bridges with one another without crossing the boundaries we might have in a space like this. With friends and family, it’s easier to show love to each other, with a simple display of affection or a long, meaningful conversation. But you might not wanna run up to your coworker and give them a hug or tell them you missed them. Even if you just wanted to have a conversation with one of your coworkers to show them you care, it’s sometimes hard to squeeze that into the few seconds you might be in the snack area or elevator together.
I’ve realized this problem is especially relevant in the U.S., because forming connection with your coworkers is a lot easier to do in Latin America. It’s as easy as briefly inquiring about each other’s families or romantic relationships, or making fun of each other. In the U.S., you not only have to worry about crossing HR lines, but you have to maintain a healthy distance from each other’s personal boundaries. Regardless though, the same concept applies — you want to form connection, without going too far.
The way to form connection with one another is: office humor. It’s the universal language of love for each other in a public space. It’s like watching a Charlie Brown cartoon where the characters speak in warbled language to each other. The words don’t matter, it’s just the exchange of words that does. By engaging in a quick volley of jokes, you’re telling the other person: I see you and I respect you. More extremely, it’s much better than ignoring the other person because you don’t have enough time or haven’t built up enough trust to have a decent conversation.
So why do people hate on office humor? Why does it make us feel empty inside sometimes anyways? Because you’re not doing office humor right. I’ve been lucky to learn from my current coworkers about how to curate office vibes that are warm, yet detached when necessary. Startups (especially) aren’t families, but mine has gotten close to feeling like one.
The best type of office humor is a bit personal. It involves remembering little details about one another, re-surfacing shared context, sharing observations about each other, and showing humility. These are all things that can happen without crossing personal boundaries if you’re smart about it. At our startup office, David (our founding engineer) masterfully makes us laugh by thoroughly appreciating a coworker’s outfit, or Arturo (our CEO) will make jokes about scavenging for cookies and milk at the end of a meal. Good office humor is lighthearted yet thoughtful and best paired with remembering names, offering warm eye contact, and exchanging a good fist bump.
Office humor isn’t only for the office. It applies in any public space where you want to form a sense of community or just basic respect for one another. My favorite interactions in my building elevator have been jokes with strangers over the janky elevator buttons. I’ve grown to love sharing laughs with new people, even here in NYC with thousands of strangers I’ll never see again. Office humor is my way of sharing good vibes with strangers; the type of good energy that always bounces right back to me.
an empathetic exchange.
Once you go past small talk, humor can turn into an exchange of empathy. We all use humor to cope and navigate life, and it’s also a vehicle to share stories with each other. Whether you’re telling a story about a failed date, or laughing about the quirks of your family, or sharing the difficulties of entering adult life, humor helps you open up. It can be a powerful invitation to connect with one another.
My friend has been starting to do standup comedy in New York, and I asked her how she was able to provide humor that was relatable, since not everyone works in tech like she does. She explained that it doesn’t have to be relatable. From her perspective, humor has changed throughout the generations. While older generations appreciated Seinfeld-like humor that was universally relevant across white American working families, younger generations laugh about non-relatable, unique, personal stories. The audience is able to put themselves in her feet, even though they don’t know anything about the tech world. It’s up to her to paint the picture and bring them into her world.
I remember watching a video explaining what empathy (as opposed to sympathy) is. It showed a cartoon person taking their friend by the hand and guiding them into a cave. The friend could now see and truly understand what the world looks like for the person, down under. If we could step into each other’s brains, this would be simple, but alas, we’re limited by the English language. Humor serves as another universal language here: the language for coping.
I wouldn’t be able to speak for them since I’ve had a generally healthy mental journey, but some of my friends went through tough times in middle school and high school. Many of those friends had a great sense of humor, constantly cracking jokes and making good-spirited fun of others or themselves. Their humor was filled with irony and an underlying theme of “expect the unexpected” in life. It’s the “this is fine” meme but in different forms. Every time they made me laugh, it was like they were extending a hand to me so that I could see the world through their lens. I learned to not refute their self-deprecating humor but instead play along and revel in the knowledge that life is chaos and misery but we continue living regardless. It felt almost like an ironic version of the original Shakespearean comedy which was considered humorous just because the hero doesn’t die. I honestly felt honored every time my friends included me in their sarcastic, sometimes dark humor.
I’ve learned that my biggest green flag for someone is their sense of humor. The common knowledge is that humor is an indicator of intelligence, but I don’t care much for someone’s intelligence if they’re not funny, to be honest. A good sense of humor indicates, for me, that someone is able to see life from an objective perspective and have a good time no matter what. I’ve unfortunately gone with dates with guys who aren’t funny for the sole reason that they’re in their heads and blinded by their ego, and they’re unable to step out of that to laugh at themselves a little. In addition to providing attractiveness, though, humor is my favorite way to connect with people. A good day for me is filled with warm laughs with others, and therefore I’ve learned to surround myself with friends who crack jokes way too often.
Reflecting on what my friend was sharing about her standup comedy, I realize that stories can be deeply personal but ultimately relatable at some level. For people with a good sense of humor, they are as good at making jokes as they are laughing at others. We all eventually relate over the experience of coping with situations in life, one way or another.
co-creation and play.
When you open yourself up fully to someone, you learn to be your inner child with them, and this is when the most intimate level of humor comes out. These are the giggles you can’t hold in and the laughs that make your belly hurt. Especially when you find someone with the same exact sense of humor as you, you’re able to toss out jokes and build off of one another, or you’re just able to make each other crack up at any second. When I’m able to engage back and forth freely with someone like this, it’s my favorite type of humor.
Growing up as an only child, I didn’t really learn how to be silly with others, like my friends with siblings did. I grew up doing normal fun things like playing board games, sports, or music and hiking with my parents, rather than just running around and being a kid. I was terrified of things like farting in front of others and I don’t remember ever making funny faces or breaking into song as a six year old. Despite my reluctance to be weird, I always loved to laugh. Instead of reading to me before bed, my dad would make up funny stories on the spot and create a cast of stuffed animals and any props he could find. I distinctly remember one of them involving a desk chair and a rotation of characters, each one taking a turn on the chair and picking up the same piece of gum to chew and leave for themselves later on. If I could go back to a point in time, I would go back to snuggling under the covers while giggling at my dad’s ridiculous stories.
In middle school, my relationship with humor turned sour. I started to face a massive insecurity: my favorite thing was to laugh, but I felt like I wasn’t funny at all, especially compared to my other teenage friends who were starting to develop great senses of humor. I entered an angsty phase and my parents took me to a therapist, who told me I seemed smart enough to probably be somewhat funny. Then I had one of the most terrifying moments in my middle school career: my 8th grade drama teacher picked me for a humor exercise in front of our 30 person class. She and I stood face to face, and I had 5 minutes to make her laugh. The next 5 minutes I visibly struggled to make a few weird noises and dances, but she was stone-faced the entire time. To this day, improv is one of my biggest fears.
It was only with my first meaningful best friends in high school, and then with my former long-term boyfriend, when I learned to lean into my weird, silly self freely. I started making up ridiculous stories or randomly acting like a cat or doing acrobatics. I also learned to let my ego go and share what’s on my mind, even if some people might not find it funny. Being fully intimate with one or two people taught me how to share bits of closeness and vulnerability with everyone else in my life.
As I lean more into my silly side, it’s been fun trying to learn what my sense of humor actually is. I could watch The Office with a poker face, but Mr. Bean will make me laugh until I cry. My favorite comedy sets in NYC are the ones that imitate the clanking sounds of our radiators and the painful slowness of our local metro lines. I love pranking people, and naturally I agreed to run an April Fool’s themed hackathon with a couple friends this next weekend.
Learning to free my inner child has made it significantly easier to connect with people through humor. It’s like playing as a kid at the playground with a friend. You poke fun at something or do something silly, and it’s an invitation to the other person to contribute something back. They might reject you, but you’ll find another kid at the playground to play with. I’ve learned I don’t want to spend significant time doing anything in life if I can’t find a playground there. I want to feel like I’m building sandcastles, playing tag, and making up stories with others.
