What's so Funny about Working in an Office?

I’ve worked in offices for a long time.  I’ve been involved officially in comedy for a shorter time.  I like both.  When people hear that I do comedy they often assume that I’ll write my comedy jokes based on my experience of working in an office, and for a few of them I do but for most of them I don’t.  And for those few that I do, they are completely made up, so not really based on my actual work in an office.  Unless by “office” you mean the office in my mind where I write my jokes, although I don’t write jokes about my mind office either.  Unless you laughed when you read that bit I just wrote about the mind office, and if you did then it was a joke about my mind office, and if you didn’t then it wasn’t.

In real offices I find that the humour tends to be situational, in that the behavioural responses people have to office situations can be humourous.  For instance, I’m typing this in an office, and I just typed the word “humourous” and the word processing tool I am using automatically “corrected” it to humorous, without one of the all so important u characters.  I guess my computer mistook me for an American, or someone who can’t spell.  Or is that the same thing?  I found that chain of thought to be funny because of the stance I took in pretending that I think that Americans spell wrong because they don’t know how to spell rather than the fact that their language is based upon English from the old days before “British English" changed to how it is now.

Another example of situational humour in the office is meetings.  How I laugh!  Inside.  The funniest thing I find about meetings, and brace yourself before I tell you this because you may just get yourself into trouser trouble if you don’t, it’s the bit of the meeting where the meeting seems to end but it keeps going on.  “So okay I think we’ve covered everything…” good it’s time to go… “Except five other things” awww please please let me go… “Ok now we’ve definitely finished, bye to everyone on the conference call, we are hanging up now” Ok so time to go now… oh no but hang on there is a little post conference call unofficial meeting where people get a bit more social and say what they really think, which then inevitably leads into getting back on topic of what was said in the meeting and repeating it a couple dozen more times.  Ok so come to think of it, that situation isn’t funny at all rather a bit annoying.

So I’m going to keep searching for funny office things, so far I have automatically correcting word processors which you cannot deny was definitely funny, and we have meetings which wasn’t.  Oh I know what’s funny about offices, it’s people fishing for attention.  That’s definitely funny, and funnier when they don’t get the attention and keep amping it up in hope that people around them finally give in.  “Oh what a morning!” <pause, nothing>… “Yeah the gym this morning… owww” <pause, nothing> “How many exercises does my personal trainer expect me to do?” <pause, nothing>… “Pay attention to me!!! I did so much exercise this morning that I nearly puked, surely that is worth your attention isn’t it?  Surely that’s a thing that makes sense to do, exercise so much that you nearly puke while some scam artist stand over you and shouts that you need to do more exercises and definitely puke!” <pause, nothing>.  

But then work life isn’t all about finding humour in things is it?  Surely you be serious about it, rather than trying to make yourself happy and spread it around to others in the hope that it lightens their day up just a little.  Definitely not, that would be ridiculous.  Next thing you know everyone would start enjoying working in the office, get more productive, make more money, then go home happy, and their partners would think something suspicious is going on and leave them.  So I must insist that you turn off your sense of humour in the office, leave it at the door, put it in one of those umbrella bags, and live out your day with a blank look on your face and darkness in your heart.  You’ll fit in better.


Richard Lindesay

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