Full Beige?
A colleague and I were talking recently about the fine art of workplace humor—specifically, whether it still exists. Not the watered-down kind, where someone makes a safe joke about meetings that should have been emails. I mean the real stuff: the inside jokes, the teasing, the playful jabs that come from knowing each other for years and actually liking your coworkers.
In the small team I work with—about 300 people within a larger company of 3,000—we’ve been around long enough to develop an unspoken understanding. It’s a mix of creative types, some with a self-admitted tendency toward social clunkiness—high-functioning, wildly talented, and wired a little differently. And yet, it works. A shared shorthand, a touch of irreverence, and the occasional eye roll at corporate absurdities make the days more tolerable.
But times have changed. The current corporate rulebook is clear: no hugs, no personal jokes, no language that could be deemed offensive. No ambiguity. And it’s obvious why these policies exist. Too many people (men, mostly) got away with nonsense for far too long under the guise of “just joking around.” Nobody should have to endure harassment, and workplace culture needed a course correction. But did we overcorrect?
Bonding vs. Breaking Rules
Humor is one of the ways people build trust. The best workplace relationships often include a little teasing—it signals camaraderie, an unspoken “we’re in this together.” And yet, that dynamic is vanishing. Not because people stopped joking, but because they’re afraid to. Every comment now carries risk. Jokes aren’t just jokes anymore; they’re potential landmines, weighed and second-guessed until people stop making them altogether. And when humor dies, it’s not because it was outlawed—it’s because trust eroded first.
The ability to joke with someone—and have them understand it’s meant in good spirit—requires a foundation of trust. If I tease you, it’s because I assume you know I respect you. If you tease me back, it means you trust I won’t suddenly decide to be offended. But what happens when that trust fractures? When every interaction feels like a carefully scripted exercise in risk management? Corporate hell doesn’t function without trust. Teams don’t function without trust. And when that disappears, the absence of humor is just a symptom of a much bigger problem: a workplace where everyone is playing defense.
One of the biggest shifts happening now is the arrival of younger employees with different standards and values. They grew up in an era of heightened awareness around language, inclusivity, and impact. They aren’t necessarily wrong—but they are different. And when they enter workplaces full of long-standing relationships and ingrained dynamics, friction is inevitable. The older guard often dismisses them as overly sensitive; the younger group often sees the existing culture as outdated or even problematic. Neither approach is helpful. The real challenge is bridging the gap—figuring out how to allow humor and authenticity to survive while acknowledging that the world has, in fact, changed. Because if we create workplaces so rigid, so stripped of personality, that people can’t even joke with each other, what’s left? A purely transactional space where people do their jobs, say the absolute minimum, and get out.
And Bitches, if that’s where we’re headed, humor is the least of our problems.