“Cant’t take a joke” is a terrible excuse for making people uncomfortable.

People are sensitive, impostor syndrome is extremely common. The people who work for you are always going to be worried about their job at some level. Don’t take advantage of your power to make a joke that is, at best, not funny and at worst incredibly anxiety-inducing.

Don't generalize, not all people are mentally weak and get uncomfortable or offended that easily even when that's the trend in the 21st century.

A manager, like everyone else, should know who to make a joke to, and he will get closer to those employees.

That's exactly what I said. Sensitive people or people with impostor syndrome are problematic. I think those people are the problem, and not jokey managers. But we can disagree, that's okay. :)

Or people with autism spectrum disorders, or other issues (just being tired, say), who might find the nuance of your joke impossible to gauge?

Your job as a manager, with "sensitive" reportees is not to be a dick and make things uncomfortable for them, it's to help them do the work they're employed for.

Perhaps managers who can't see they're on shaky ground making such a joke are liable to be problematic in some other capacity.

A manager with a sense of humor is different from a manager who jokes about ending your employment. Imagine getting pulled over and a cop jokes about arresting you- are you laughing or do you feel unnerved? You were being sarcastic, but unnerving employees by making jokes rooted in your power over others does have the potential to negatively impact company culture and thus the company itself. The power dynamic matters.

Making jokes about firing subordinates shows a bad sense of humor -- it's not funny, it's making light of a power imbalance at the expense of the subordinate.

It's like when a cop makes jokes about shooting you after pulling you over for expired tabs (happened when I was a teen).

It is more or less universally recognized that jokes are only funny if they are punching upwards. Someone in a position of power making jokes about using that power against someone with less power is more akin to bullying.

Your manager is not your enemy. Your manager making a joke is not kicking you down, he's trying to breed camaraderie.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with...

Most of the Evil in This World Is Done by People with Good Intentions - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/12/19/intentions/

I would argue that breeding camaraderie requires empathy and understanding with other person as opposed to blindly projecting one’s sense of humor upon another.

This is the mindset that gave Gervais and Merchant plenty of material for The Office. Are you David Brent, by any chance?

> Your manager is not your enemy. Your manager making a joke is not kicking you down, he's trying to breed camaraderie.

This is getting strangely personal. If you are joking, well done on the subtlety!

Yep, nothing like joking about using the power you and no one under you has to end employment to really punch up the ol' team spirit.

The manager who thinks that firing you would be funny is your enemy.

Yes, they may take other jokes wrong, but this probably isn't the metric you need to optimize as a manager. And it probably isn't a very good proxy for whatever that metric might be. This is to say nothing of worsening that metric by stressing out your employees.

"Advice to New Police Officers: Don't Joke About Shooting People"

People in positions of power should not take lightly their ability to ruin peoples' lives with strangers. Or anyone, really, but especially strangers.