Nothing Left to Joke About
At long last, there’s nothing left to joke about in the workplace–or apparently anywhere else. We’ve been headed in that direction for a long time, but it took Dick Cheney, our much maligned Vice President, to bring all joking to an end.
In a recent speech, Cheney joked–or tried to–that there are Cheneys on both sides of his family, and “we don’t even live in West Virginia.” A prominent old West Virginia politician, former member of the Ku Klux Klan and surely a man of pure speech, chastised Cheney for his “contempt and astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen.”
Then the pundits weighed in to explain that Cheney’s form of humor is a long-standing way to make fun of the poor whites by holding up to ridicule their alleged inbreeding proclivities. The term “white trash” was also examined and explained. Using that term is one more way for whites to show their prejudice toward blacks. It’s more complicated than I had thought.
Which leads me back to something I’ve said before on this blog, except now I must expand it. I’ve expressed regrettable confusion over what can and can’t be said about race. Now, I don’t know what to say about anything. Growing up in Tennessee, I was accustomed to inbreeding jokes. Some of them were quite clever I thought. I apologize for thinking that.
The social and political progress we’re making these days is confounding. A woman coming within a whisker of getting the nomination for the presidency. An African-American getting the nomination. An old man snagging the other nomination in this year of burgeoning diversity. It’s all something to be happy about–but a joke is probably dicey.
All human resources professionals know that inappropriate language shouldn’t be permitted in the workplace. As repeatedly noted on this bog, it can result in harassment charges and lawsuits. Sexist, ageist, racist and other ethnic jokes are dangerous and out of bounds. HR is the designated language police. It now appears, however, that being the police isn’t enough. You must be the Gestapo, the KGB, the secret police.
Is this what we’ve come to? Should you talk with your lawyer about a no-joking-in-the-workplace policy? Must you demand that joking cease–if it pokes fun at any person, any group? I don’t think so. What you must demand is that your employees be reasonably respectful. If an employee complains about a joke, look into the complaint and take reasonable, appropriate action if necessary.
Or–to be suffocatingly safe, you can ban joking–which means that if Mark Twain and Will Rogers were still alive, they’d have to leave the country.
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Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 7:48 am under
[...] to Dick Cheney? If so, John Phillips writes that Dick Cheney recently found out the hard way that all human resources professionals know that inappropriate language shouldn’t be permitted in the w…. Indeed, in CBOCS v Humphries and Gomez-Perez v Potter on 27 May 2008, the US Supreme Court held in [...]
June 15th, 2008 at 9:08 pmThanks for including my post. What a blawg!
June 16th, 2008 at 7:29 amAny advice on how to be proactive when a white man and a white man continually ‘joke’ and the other is hurting his feelings or a white woman and white woman and its meant to torment the other? How do you deal w/ that? There are no racial, gender, social or age comments. Its all behavioral? And clearly one party is bullying.
It became so difficult to deal w/ 2 employees who were peers and consistently at each others throats to compete that the one was rallying up the troops against the other and badmouthing the weaker individual. However the weaker employee was so hurt that the team abandoned him he left and he was the best most productive ee on the project!
The manager at the time, was too busy hearing the voices of the others and sided w/ them and shunned this man.
A year later we let the other guy go b/c of temperament issues! I tried working w/ the Manager and explaining that there are two sides and we need to focus on performance and facts.
But popularity and coolness and people skills took over…which drove away some top talent.
How does HR address being ‘cool’ and having ‘people skills’ v.s. popularity contests and keeping the HS drama out of the workplace?
Again, my third time asking tonight, any advice?
July 19th, 2008 at 9:31 pmGood questions, but hard to answer.
When there is conflict between employees, it’s the job of their supervisor with the help of HR to try to resolve the conflict. As you say, the resolution should be based on performance and the facts, not popularity. It sounds like that there should be a message coming from the top of the organization about this sort of thing.
The worst thing a manager can do is come across as taking sides instead of trying to resolve the dispute or conflict. A manager who shuns an employee has no business being a manager. That’s not how you manage.
My advice is that any employer should promote a culture of respect, hear out both sides where there’s a conflict, make a reasoned decision, expect the affected employees to abide by the decision, and take appropriate action if one or more of them don’t. My advice is also to fire the manager you described in your question.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:54 pm