Hey,
just looking for someone outside the situation to tell me if I’m being soft or not.
basically I’ve had some issues at work recently. Our manager is the type who encourages banter and jokes, and encourages collegues to be like that too. It ranges from cheesy dad jokes, to just plain unfunny stuff, and sometimes stuff which in my opinion is inappropriate. It’s sort of caused an environment where people just say whatever they want, because he tries so hard to be everyone’s friend so nobody gets into trouble.
the thing is, I don’t find the jokes funny. I’ll sometimes pretend laugh or play along if it’s things like dad jokes and it’s harmless, but it’s so draining when I’m trying do work and he’s bouncing about like a Labrador puppy trying to get attention.
the other issue is sometimes the jokes are frankly inappropriate. Recently it was that one of the guys in our work was in the Epstein files. And then they had chat GPT’d a picture of him hugging Epstein on the island.
I just don’t find it funny. I understand some people have different senses of humour, and I don’t want to be chronically offended by everything, but with the nature of the Epstein island crimes I just don’t find it funny at all. I didn’t laugh, I just walked off. But now everyone thinks I’m a spoilsport/no fun/antisocial. That’s a small example but there’s been similar jokes I consider inappropriate (sexual, racial etc) and I don’t take part but I’ve sort of isolated myself now.
recently there’s been some racism too. I have friends of all different races/religions etc and I cannot stand any type of racism. It used to just be propalestine stuff which is fine because everyone is entitled to their political opinion, but recently there’s been comments which are not anti Israel but instead just anti Jewish. So for example, I had pinched a pen from a different room because someone else pinched mine, and I sort of lightheartedly joked about ‘I’ll just steal this for 2 minutes!’ to which one of the guys turned round and said ‘I always knew you were such a fucking Jew’ I was confused at first, I’ve had jokes at me before because I have an obviously jewish name (I’m not Jewish however) so when I said what are you talking about he turned round and said ‘stealing stuff that’s not yours, typical fucking Jew behaviour’ he was joking but also serious. I was absolutely shocked and more so at the fact it was said openly in front of others who just laughed. Other comments have been similar. There’s also been racist jokes about other races but mostly anti Jewish comments tbh.
I dont know anyone Jewish but I cannot stand racism of any type towards any race or religion. But it just gets laughed at and encouraged as if it’s acceptable. I’ve stood my ground and said it’s an awful thing to say, but then everyone just thinks I’m a spoilsport/boring/killjoy.
the thing is, I don’t want to fit in if it means going along with banter like that. But this is my first graduate job and while I know their jokes are inappropriate part of me is scared I’m just a killjoy and boring. This isn’t normal workplace behaviour is it? I’m trying to leave asap, but I’m just so fed up of it all I’m sort of losing perspective and worried im just being a killjoy?