Employee makes half-joke about asking for 'allowance' when boss calls them family, boss retaliates and buries him under projects: 'It was clearly tongue in cheek'

Making jokes at work can be incredibly risky.

Joking around is a huge part of building camaraderie, even at the office. Humans bond through laughter, and we need ways to connect with each other in a lighthearted way. All the friends I've made in my life, I've made because we've shared a laugh together. It brings your guard down, puts you in a good mood, and makes you more ready to empathize. It's the quickest way we can bond, and bonding is incredibly important if you're working closely with a group of people. But jokes can be a risk as well. The wrong joke at the wrong time can spell doom for you and your office if you're not careful. You would hate to be called into HR because of something you said to try to be funny.

To paraphrase a comment on this story, when you're starting a new job, you have to recalibrate your sense of comfort. You never know what is going to fly in a certain environment that did not fly in the previous one, and vice versa. Maybe your previous boss had a high tolerance for joking around. They saw it as part of the environment and knew that it wasn't going to affect your work. But you can't assume that your next boss is going to have the same attitude. You have to neutralize some of your impulses when starting a new job before you learn what's appropriate.

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That's what went wrong in this story, where a new employee made a joke that they didn't think much of, which ended up having ramifications for his career. He thought he was just saying something silly to break the tension and speak to a larger truth about workplace culture. While some of his colleagues laughed, his boss took it seriously. But instead of facing that friction head-on and communicating about what went wrong, they let it come out in passive-aggressive ways. Read on to see what happened in this story and decide what you would have done in his shoes. And see what advice commenters had to give.
Made a half-joke during a meeting and now I feel like I've put a target on my back.

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Commenters gave their takes on this story.

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