Alright, so I was thinking about this whole topic… you know, sextual jokes. It’s one of those things you run into, right?
I remember this one place I used to work at, quite a while back. It wasn’t all the time, but yeah, sometimes the humor went in that direction. Some guys, mostly, thought it was the peak of comedy. Others clearly didn’t.
My own sort of ‘practice’ in that situation was mostly just trying to figure out how to navigate it. Didn’t really feel like joining in, felt kinda awkward most times. It wasn’t really a structured thing, more like feeling my way through day by day.
What I Tried Doing
So, here’s kinda what my process looked like:
- First thing I did was just try to ignore it. Put my head down, focus on my screen, pretend I didn’t hear. That worked sometimes.
- Other times, I’d try to steer the conversation. Like, someone drops a weird joke, and I’d jump in quick with something totally different, maybe work-related, maybe just asking about the weekend. Mixed results on that one.
- Spent a lot of time just observing, honestly. Watching who laughed, who went quiet, who rolled their eyes. You learn a lot about people that way, how the group works.
- Realized pretty quick that forcing myself to laugh or participate just felt wrong. Made me uncomfortable, and it probably showed.
Looking back, the main thing wasn’t even the jokes themselves, good or bad. It was the atmosphere it created. It often felt kinda unprofessional, maybe a bit exclusionary? Hard to put a finger on it exactly.
My ‘practice’ ended up being less about jokes and more about figuring out workplace dynamics, I guess. How people use humor, how it lands differently for everyone. It was a learning process, for sure.
Ended up figuring out I just prefer work environments where that kind of stuff isn’t really part of the daily chatter. Makes things simpler, easier to just focus on getting the job done, you know?
