To ask if my joke to new work colleague would have offended you?

[Abbeymum]

We are quite a small team and had a new staff member join this week. It’s a very friendly and jokey culture so we are always light heartedly ribbing each other.

Anyway - new colleague was eating a salad with two boiled eggs. We were chatting and she says that’s a usual weekday lunch for her. I replied that I bet she has stocked up on the air freshener for when she’s home.

Blank face…sense of humour failure on her part?

Eggs don’t make people fart unless they have some kind of sensitivity to them (i think?!), which she probably doesn’t as she eats them so often! it may have taken her a moment to wonder what you were talking about.

As a PP has pointed out, It's only a joke if it is funny.

And this isnt funny to most grown ups. We left that kind of "humour" behind at primary school. I wouldn't be offended in the slightest. I prefer more grown up, subtle humour. I used to find Mock the Week hilarious.

Grown ups with childish "humour" like you and the OP are very much in the minority.

I think a lot of people wouldn’t have got the joke as I don’t think eggs really make you fart, it’s def an old person joke.

Yeah, don't hold your breath waiting for that call from the Comedy Store.

I thought it was a myth that eggs cause constipation because people confused what they do in baking with the effect on human bodies

Definitely not funny and commenting on someone else's food when you have no idea why they might eat a certain way is just unkind. Being aware of other people's needs and not being unkind is part of being a nicer human.

It's also possible she may have felt you were asking her to change what she likes to eat as you linked it to smell...all around a nasty comment

If it was man to woman its even more loaded

I’ll see you in the queue 🙄

I'm very self conscious while eating in front of others so definitely wouldnt have had eggs but I find scatalogical humour so crass, puerile and idiotic that as well as embarrassed myself I'd have deemed the perpetrator as an immature halfwit. Id have also been quite upset that they aimed the 'joke" at me.

Making a joke about a new colleague's potential digestive issues/poo tract? Just a bit weird too really.

I'm howling (not at the joke, though!) - are people really so precious??? 😂Nothing wrong with your comment, OP, carry on!!!

I'd wonder where I landed if a fully grown adult in a work setting made juvenile fart jokes

I'd be offended and start wondering if it was too early to start looking for another job

I don’t have an intrinsic problem with toilet humour: it has its place sometimes.

But its situational and you have to read the room. A fart joke between spouses or with someone you have worked with for 15 years is one thing. Ambushing someone who has just started working with you and making a snide comment about what they are eating is borderline bullying.

It’s bound to make the person feel uncomfortable and unsettled. You reinforce this with the subsequent comment about how no one else would fit in at your workplace. Its about subtly signaling to the person that you and your colleagues have a clique and that they are at the bottom of the hierarchy and need to kowtow to you and your chums and your banter. Its like public school.

If you had said this to me I would have concluded that you were a nob and using your place in this petty and inconsequential little fiefdom to intimidate newcomers.

I wouldn't find it offensive but I would think you were crass and immature. I would expect most people to have grown out of primary-school playground bodily-function jokes by the time they are going out to work.

I think that's key really, for this type of thing. You've got to know the target well enough to know how it will land. And if you don't, don't risk it.

You may want to reflect on the fact 91 % of people think your joke was a bit shit / not nice

She was probably embarrassed for you. What an infantile joke to make.
As a rule, don’t make jokes about people’s food. You’ve now made her self conscious about the food she brings into work.
Grow up and act your age.

It’s a very friendly and jokey culture so we are always light heartedly ribbing each other. This sounds tedious.

She's a new colleague, your childish personal comment was not the right remark for the situation. Good on her for not wasting energy pretending to laugh.

I find it interesting because I seem to generally have a very acute sense of smell. More so than most people. I don't smell eggs at all. Maybe it's one of those things like the coriander gene? Some people think it tastes like soap, others love it. Or some people can smell asparagus in the bathroom afterwards, others can't.

Sure you would.

I don't think 'egg bound' is a term that applies to human beings! 😂😂😂

Same. I’m the one in the house who is the first to smell something is off.

I only smell eggs when they’ve gone off or I have to put my nose centimetres from them and when doing that, it’s not a strong smell to me or particularly unpleasant, but my mother smells them stronger than me and doesn’t like the smell or eggs unless they have cheese in them.

I’m definitely in the love coriander and it doesn’t taste like soap, and enjoy asparagus but hate the smell it causes which I can smell any time someone has eaten them.

agreed
The new colleague was supposed to laugh heartily at your joke, and she would be straight in to the bantering inner circle. The fact that she didn't has offended you. Hence this thread. I'd be surprised if you had'nt mentioned this to the other banter folk to see if they agreed it was a joke.

Now your new colleague is on the outside, she's stuffy, can't take a joke etc..

It crossed a professional boundary at work and was not a welcomong or inclusive comment to a new colleague. It also could be oerceived as passive aggressive.

One man's meat is another man's poison and it was unwarranted to make such a comment to a new colleague who was probably trying to fit in.

It smacks of an attitude that stinks and the stink has nothing to do with the eggs.

Of course I wouldn't be offended. But jokes are meant to be funny. And this isn't.

Its just a really childish crap 'joke'. As a recipient i would be cringing, not found it funny cos im not 6 and no doubt said as much but with a smile on my face

No sense of humour failure on your part!