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?

Also not true, it all depends on how varied and healthy the rest of her diet is.

Toilet humour is beneath some of these posters. They're more upper class. Not like us common people.

Or just not 5?

Totally second this. Workplace bullying.

No one has said they find it offensive.

Most have said they just don’t think it’s funny.

Some have said it would have gone over their heads because they don’t personally have that reaction to eggs.

Others have said they would find it rude.

I’ve mainly seen those who would find it humorous claim those who don’t are offended when it is not the case.

People can not like something without being offended.

I think it’s crass to reference bodily fluids or toilets while people are eating but not offended by it. I just ignore it.

I'm really glad I don't either!

Same. ‘Banter though, innit’.

We are grown ups capable of reading the room. Given that 91% of posters think that toilet humour is puerile and best left at primary school, I can only conclude that you don't seem to be able to undersand that.

Its not about toilet humour. It’s not about offence.

It’s about basic social skills: knowing how not to make a new person feel isolated and stupid and resisting the urge to show off to everyone about your clique’s “bantz” at the expense of someone who’s not in the club.

Its pathetic, childish behaviour and it would immediately make me think someone was a dick.

Hello Andrew, new masseur on the team?

I don't think that humour referencing bodily functions, lavatories, sex etc is appropriate in the workplace, no matter how intimate you are with your colleagues.
If you absolutely must, then save it for the pub and social occasions.

If I had been your new colleague, my heart would have sunk and I would have wondered who on earth I was amongst.
Not because it would have offended me but because I find it all cringey and crass.

I don't mind this kind of silly, childish humour but I wouldn't expect it from someone at work that I barely knew. I wouldn't be offended but I'd be a bit uncomfortable.

As a grown adult that’s a very poor joke, I didn’t even get it till I read everyone else’s reply. Such a silly thing to say to a new colleague

Great joke, I’d of laughed my head off

She is a brand new colleague so you don’t know her well enough to joke with her yet.

That was a nasty comment and would potentially have humiliated them.

I don’t think I’d have made the connection between eggs and farting, really. If it was cabbage soup or a three-bean chilli or something, I’d have known what you meant, but a hard-boiled egg and salad?! I’d have just thought you were being weird.

I also think you have to know someone pretty well to joke about them farting. She’s a new colleague and you don’t have any established rapport with her. I have longstanding colleagues who I can joke about all sorts of things with, but I wouldn’t replicate that with a colleague I don’t know very well.

I guess it figures - from someone who says "of " instead of " have"

Its not particularly funny unless you're aged 6.

I wouldn't have laughed either. It's a crude fart joke. Hate jokes that revolve around poo, wee and parts. It's just childish. She probably won't bring eggs again now!

I would've smiled politely but inwardly thought you're a bit of a dick

I don’t think it was the least bit offensive. It wasn’t a particularly funny joke but I would probably have laughed. I certainly wouldn’t have sat stoney faced like your colleague.

I wouldn’t have been offended as such, I just don’t find toilet humour in any way funny, and I definitely wouldn’t have said that to sometime barely know!

She doesn’t know you, and you were extremely rude, assuming you are a man who is past retirement age who finds his own jokes funny!

Surely asking if she had plenty of prunes at home would at least have made sense…..