“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

In regards to your observation of going to more seriousness, I think that the tough economic times are causing people to think that they can’t use humor, even though that’s when it’s needed most. I go into more detail in a post called How to Use Humor During a Recession.

This was a great article–and a nice companion piece to Karl’s post a few days ago about being weird (in a good way) at work. I’d say that a collective lack of a sense of humour and too much restraint on the occasional bout of silliness/weirdness are probably good indications that the employees in a department– or an entire organization–are likely overworked and overstressed and possibly have found themselves in a culture that is decidedly not emotionally healthy. Then again, maybe it’s just all that dull beige, gray or depressing gray-blue decor that is used far too lavishly in “cubicle cities” that just sucks the joy and life out of people.

I have some great memories of a colleague and I going into near hysterics laughing when all of our best efforts to be very organized and efficient in terms of getting packages of surveys out were sacrificed on the altar of Murphy’s Law. It was either laugh or cry, so we opted for laughter.

I’ve seen an ever increasing shift toward too much seriousness and workaholism and an alarming reduction in the amount of authentic laughter about funny or silly occurrences.(Laugher at nasty jokes or that are based on some kind of one-upmanship really doesn’t count as genuine or healing laughter, in my books).

@Marelisa: Don’t you think Karl should try stand-up? I think it would be great. And laughter and humor have a number of great advantages in the workplace: creativity, productivity, workplace satisfaction…

@Tom: You raise a good point on expression. People aren’t just afraid to laugh, they’re afraid to show honest emotion (happiness, disappointment, etc). Obviously you don’t want to be an emotional wreck at work, but you shouldn’t be a robot.