Years ago, after visiting an "idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company" famous for their risky sense of humour, workplace humour expert Barbara Plester came to realise it was not harmless banter taking place there, but bullying.
She explores the fine line between humour and bullying in a new research article.
Ricky Gervais as office manager David Brent in the BBC TV series The Office. Photo: YouTube screenshot
Barbara Plester has spent years researching humour in the workplace but hadn't factored in bullying until she shared descriptions of this particular company with fellow academics.
"We found this one company where the humour was so extreme and seemed a bit dark. And everywhere I presented the research people said 'hey, that's bullying'."
Here's a sample from "It only hurts when I laugh": tolerating bullying humour in order to belong at work' (published in The European Journal of Humour Research in August 2022):
Jake (a pseudonym for the CEO) mimes a batting action declaring: "Next time, we will bend you over this desk, pull down your trousers, and get the girls to spank you with table tennis paddles".
The senior manager adds: "And you're not allowed to enjoy it..."
Jake concludes: "And if that doesn't work, we'll swipe CDs down your arse!"
At this company, office behaviour, which included mooning and humping, was worse than that shown in the British version of The Office, Plester tells Jesse Mulligan.
"Some of it was lighthearted and really good fun but some of it was really dark and pointed and it never let up. Also, the other thing that made us present this as bullying was some people got targeted over and over."
Listen to the interview
Barbara Plester Photo: Supplied
The company – which no longer exists in the same form – was small (about 25 employees), had no HR department and all of the employees knew each other pretty well, Plester says.
"They were quite proud of the fact that their humour was a bit extreme, it was on the edge. They knew it transgressed societal boundaries but they didnt care. That's who they were, that's how they identified themselves. So there was quite a bit of bravado going on with that as well."
Banter becomes bullying when its ongoing, sustained and repeatedly targets the same person or group of people, Plester says.
Bullying delivered as banter is sly because if you stand up to it you get accused of not being able to take a joke.
"I find it a particularly insidious form of bullying because the person that's being attacked can't fight back easily."
Barbara Plester is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School. 'It only hurts when I laugh' is one of the first academic studies to explore the connection between workplace humour and bullying.