When I got forced into early retirement...for months so many co-workers called saying... "the place sucks, just isn't the same anymore." It was my job to liven the place up, laughs, jokes, hijinx, stupid stories. The resident stand-up comedian, court jester.

You got to keep it loose at the workplace... keep everyone on their toes.....:). Only thing I miss about my long career.

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says...

The balancing -- actually juggling -- act is not to be seen as the court jester, a synonym for which is fool. In Shakespeare, Lear's fool survived as long as he did only because he kept a non-paid gig with Lear. If the fool were still court jester for either Regan or Goneril -- the new management -- it would have been a short engagement before the lengthening of the distance between his head and trunk.

My non-humorous advice on the subject of humor in and about the workplace is to be a good audience but a non-comedic performer. Supervisors with a tendency toward paranoia have a tendency to think they are the aim of jokes and jokesters, and in the Darwinian world of corporatism, there is a surplus of rats to do the ratting.

Double-Delta Foxtrot (for those without some military knowledge, Don't Draw Fire) is a reasonably good self-preservation approach.

No I here ya mick....sometimes it's good and a sign of confidence when you can avail yourself as the "straight man"... enabling others to make levity at your expense. I find it rather hilarious.

Hiring people with a sense of humor, assuming you share their brand of humor, is a free way for businesses to keep people happy through the ever increasing workloads.

Everyone here that has a job please take one step forward....

Sorry dude not you.... (Place name here) Ha Ha Ha?

A sense of humor is the only thing I can afford right now.

What do you call a person who recklessly crashes an economy and ruins the lives of millions of people he doesn't know?

A Wall Street Banker! Ha!

I guess you would have to have a strong sense of humor to find that funny!

If you do your job WELL, and are dependable....you can afford to be a comedian.

I love the WORK that I do. And the company I work for is one of the best ones for this area with a great reputation. But the people in my office are so stiff and B-O-R-I-N-G. (Hello? Is this thing on?) It really does take it's toll day after day. Not one bit of humor. There are days when I question whether trading in this job for a happier atmosphere would be worth it.

Humor really is that important and if one questions this, try going without it.

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Defining "sense of humor" is pretty subjective. What someone else finds funny, I may not & vice versa. So, to make that a condition of the workplace is pretty stupid if you are going to miss out on a superstar.

It's very possible that so many CFO's want their potential employees to have a sense of humor in order that they laugh when they see their paychecks, as opposed to crying when they see it.

I find that most taxi drivers in AZ have a good sense of Yuma.

We just had an entire change in our management at my job. It went from a manager who was well respected, but relaxed and joked with us, to a no-nonsense, practically inaccessible manager. I feel SO much more stressed at work and just thinking about work and my job satisfaction has gone way down. I took a vacation before the switch and didn't mind the thought of coming back to work. Now I dread Mondays like a kid who forgot her homework. The atmosphere is awful, even though I love the job that I'm doing.

I once got a job because they asked what I could bring to the office that someone else couldn't. I said, "I have a very good sense of humor." It wasn't until after I was hired that one of my co-workers told me that they knew I would need a good sense of humor in that office and that's why they hired me! I was there five years and like to think that I brought some levity to an otherwise humorless place. I am retired now and do stand-up comedy so that office was my training ground on finding the humor in most situations and how to "turn around" hecklers, including bosses!

Of course, doing the job properly and efficiently is #1. But sometimes, that itself requires a laugh or two. In my case, I work for an appointment-based transportation service for the handicapped. Half our reservations clerks can't spell, (seriously, they like to hire people whose primary language is Spanish for some reason), so the notations on the addresses are sometimes badly misspelled and that itself is funny. (Imagine trying to drive someone to Murky Hostel instead of Mercy Hospital.) And we've got two-way radios and the drivers sometimes make little jokes back and forth when people ask for directions and such. Like we have this one customer with season tickets to the local baseball team... anytime he's somewhere other than the stadium, we're like, "oh, I know where he is... wait, there's no ballgame today. where is he?"

I find a well developed sense of humor is a great indicator of other desirable personality traits like intelligence and empathy.

Just kidding.

I actually surveyed job postings on Craigslist for 30 days in 9 major metros back in 2007 for the word "humor" and then did some analysis. The write-up is here...

http://www.brainhandles.com/techno-thoughts/technology-life/what-jobs-require-humor-funny-you-ask

You need a sense of humor when you have to lay people off.

Knock, Knock,

Who's There?

Not you anymore.

So, most CFO's think that one of the most important qualities a finance/accounting job candidate can have is humor. Well judging by what many CFO's have been doing during the past 12 years; you know - Enron, Worldcom, AIG, various investment & commercial banking concerns, various mortgage companies, Solyndra, etc., etc., etc.; I guess honesty, objectivity, and ethics are no longer desirable in their underlings.

America is no longer the land of hard, honest, constructive work. It's become the land of spin, hype, and pandering. What a great future awaits us!