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This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.Subscribe
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This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.
No comments yet. HR has everyone scared.
@Mike: Hahaha. My thoughts exactly.
HR people freak me out. I did catch some flak from my boss recently for an “off-color joke”, but in a social setting …
Wow, we’re up to three. (0 comments when I clicked in here.) Mostly at-work readership??
On the record: I’d go with this, in that while I swear I can see the IQ meter tanking mid-joke with my ‘BFF’s, I can honestly explain that without freaking, because of our relationship. As for the few true lmao ones that are racy but not racial (or targeting any group except ‘human’)? Honest there, too – save *that* one for the wine coolers at home, not the water cooler!
HR, in contrast, has no *intentonal* humor, unless Catbert has taken over. For him human=humor=humiliation.
I’ve found it’s the on-color jokes that seem to get HR most upset.
It’s because those HR people don’t have anything better to do.
Pingback: Daily News About Work : A few links about Work - Tuesday, 28 April 2009 19:44
So what would go in the upper right?
@Jamie: Politicians and celebrities.
@Jamie – Managers – will make the most off colour joke and then get offended at something far milder.
What if you’re a tenured teacher? What goes in the upper left then?
Okay, maybe I’m an idiot, but what does HR stand for?
@Elizabeth: I think it’s Human Relations?
@Elizabeth: Human Resources
I was just thinking the other day how different work atmosphere used to be 20 years ago – I was waiting tables then, and just about everything the staff said to each other was sexual innuendo. At the time, it was fun and funny, but that kind of thing wouldn’t be allowed today.
I understand some people take stuff too far, and it becomes harassment… I guess what’s funny for one is potential harassment for another.
I had an opportunity the other day – I got a message that someone’s IP “tickled us the wrong way”… but I had to drop it, not knowing how a joke would be taken.
That’s part of it, too – you know your BFF, and how they’ll take what you say.
This is still allowed in most places around the world. Only in the US (and maybe Europe?) this is such a problem.
I worked for 3 years in the US, and then relocated to Australia. In the first few days I cringed from the kind of jokes that go on in the workplace… until I realized that it was me who was over-sensitized to the overly-politically-correct situation in the US, and that that is the exception rather than the rule.
– Arik
I love the title.
All my comments are already taken…
@ Arik
Australian workplace/s did not appear overly sensitive about ‘off-colour jokes’? I thought we had the same problem with required overly PCness. Apparently not – I ponder with wonder how PC the US must be and fear for what happened when you heard a properly off-colour Australian joke outside of work…
It’s all relative ain’t it? Having worked in both countries I’d say that the US is very much more PC than Australia.
At least in my workplace (which is an office most of the time) you can freely interject with the S word, the F word, the A word (which has a different spelling in Australia), the B word or even the MF combo – as long as it is done in context and not for insult sake. Even in customer meetings in a sales context it can be done, after some rapport has been established.
Any US HR person would cringe in terror.
– Arik
Yeah, I’ve heard that too.
I’ve never worked anywhere outside Australia before. But I’ve been warned that if you go to the US or the UK to work, you really have to watch your mouth because swearing in casual coversation could get you fired.
Whereas over here, as long as you aren’t being malicious, most people dont even bat an eyelid.
This is uncanny. I’m just catching the post today, but I actually got reprimanded at work on Monday (when this was posted) for making what I thought (and still do) was a completely innocuous comment a few days earlier. Weird.
There are so many words with multiple meanings that it’s almost impossible to never offend people who are actively looking to get offended.
It’s not for nothing Scott Adams likes to call them ‘Human Remorse department’ :)
@Sakimori
Just for the record, where (in the world) do you work?
– Arik
So why has the pendulum swung so far from fun workplaces with the occasional idiocy present to completely regulated workplaces where companies are so afraid of one individual taking offense because companies are held responsible for one possible asshole’s behavior? Hmmm….
“The first thing we should do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – Billy Shakespeare
I heard somewhere that over 75% of the litigation in the WORLD takes place in the USA. Without sexual harassment suits their economy would be in even worse trouble than it’s in.
That said, it can be unfair and really oppressive to be a woman in a man’s workplace here. If men “had a clue” sometimes, we could all lighten up.