What do you do when in an interview, the interviewer asks you to tell him/her a joke? Apparently this has happened, according to http://www.businessinsider.com/17-real-job-interview-questions-you-dont-want-to-be-asked-2011-3#tell-me-a-joke-8
This worries me. I enjoy jokes and funny stories, and I read a lot of them. I have a list of websites dedicated to humour, and I check them everyday for updates. If I pick up a magazine, the first section I look for in the table of contents is the humour page or the cartoon section. Funny videos always get a 'Like' from me in Facebook. And I downloaded and installed the StumbleUpon program just to gain more access to humour.
Part of the reason is I am not usually able to generate humour myself. It's like a vitamin the body can't produce, hence the necessity to look for external sources.
Even worse news follows. I suck at telling jokes, even the really good ones. Partly because I can't remember most of them, although I will recognize a joke if I have come across it before, and partly because I simply don't tell them properly. Telling a joke isn't like writing an essay or making a speech; you can't really just wing it and expect the words to come together. There has to be a good buildup, and there has to be a good finish, when you tell the punchline, otherwise it just can't make an impact. I'm good at talking, and better at writing, but comedy? I just can't get it.
Let's assume I can get over the telling part of it, and am able to tell the joke nicely. Let's also say I remember them fully; for the sake of the interview, I can memorize a good number of them. What kind of jokes do you tell in an interview?
Many jokes that I read are circumstantial; they are anecdotes, and they are funny only when the person relating the experience talks about them. Relaying them to a third person just doesn't have the same impact. Then of course, one has to filter out all the 'dirty' jokes; I can't bring that sort of joke to the workplace. Once that is done, I'd want to knock out all the jokes that are based on stereotypes - the "a physicist, an engineer and a mathematician walk into a bar" type of thing - because those jokes directly make fun of someone. The interviewer may be an engineer, but if his wife or his parents or his kids are mathematicians, that joke is going to get me kicked out. Another common example of this type of joke is the "customer is not always right" type of joke. It may be funny, but it is still humour at someone else's expense. Moreover, my field usually requires a good amount of customer interaction, and while they won't be clueless customers who walk into a restaurant, that kind of joke doesn't show me in a positive light.
Which leaves me with jokes of the following type:
Two atoms are talking. One says to the other: "I think I lost an electron!" "Are you sure?" the other one says. "Yep," the first one replies, "I'm positive!"
It's a great joke, and it's everything I want, clean, based on a pun so it doesn't make fun of anyone, healthy. But it's also the kind of joke that would only appeal to a niche audience of people - those who are into science.
Another one of my favourites:
Two neutrinos walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve neutrinos in this bar!" The neutrinos say, "That's okay, we were just passing through."
The joke is of course, that neutrinos are very tiny particles that usually just pass through most objects; you hardly ever get to see them interact with matter. They were just "passing through" the bar. It's a funny joke, but it would fall flat if the listener didn't know anything about neutrinos.
Try as I might, it's hard to find the right type of joke! Most humour on the planet seems to be wicked in some way; if not 'dirty', the fun is at someone's expense. So begins my search for good, clean humour, that I can relay with peace of mind to a third person. So also begins my effort to become a better joke-teller. It's funny though, to think that my search for something as vital as a job has to be punctuated with something like the search for humour. It's serious, and it's hilarious.
This worries me. I enjoy jokes and funny stories, and I read a lot of them. I have a list of websites dedicated to humour, and I check them everyday for updates. If I pick up a magazine, the first section I look for in the table of contents is the humour page or the cartoon section. Funny videos always get a 'Like' from me in Facebook. And I downloaded and installed the StumbleUpon program just to gain more access to humour.
Part of the reason is I am not usually able to generate humour myself. It's like a vitamin the body can't produce, hence the necessity to look for external sources.
Even worse news follows. I suck at telling jokes, even the really good ones. Partly because I can't remember most of them, although I will recognize a joke if I have come across it before, and partly because I simply don't tell them properly. Telling a joke isn't like writing an essay or making a speech; you can't really just wing it and expect the words to come together. There has to be a good buildup, and there has to be a good finish, when you tell the punchline, otherwise it just can't make an impact. I'm good at talking, and better at writing, but comedy? I just can't get it.
Let's assume I can get over the telling part of it, and am able to tell the joke nicely. Let's also say I remember them fully; for the sake of the interview, I can memorize a good number of them. What kind of jokes do you tell in an interview?
Many jokes that I read are circumstantial; they are anecdotes, and they are funny only when the person relating the experience talks about them. Relaying them to a third person just doesn't have the same impact. Then of course, one has to filter out all the 'dirty' jokes; I can't bring that sort of joke to the workplace. Once that is done, I'd want to knock out all the jokes that are based on stereotypes - the "a physicist, an engineer and a mathematician walk into a bar" type of thing - because those jokes directly make fun of someone. The interviewer may be an engineer, but if his wife or his parents or his kids are mathematicians, that joke is going to get me kicked out. Another common example of this type of joke is the "customer is not always right" type of joke. It may be funny, but it is still humour at someone else's expense. Moreover, my field usually requires a good amount of customer interaction, and while they won't be clueless customers who walk into a restaurant, that kind of joke doesn't show me in a positive light.
Which leaves me with jokes of the following type:
Two atoms are talking. One says to the other: "I think I lost an electron!" "Are you sure?" the other one says. "Yep," the first one replies, "I'm positive!"
It's a great joke, and it's everything I want, clean, based on a pun so it doesn't make fun of anyone, healthy. But it's also the kind of joke that would only appeal to a niche audience of people - those who are into science.
Another one of my favourites:
Two neutrinos walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve neutrinos in this bar!" The neutrinos say, "That's okay, we were just passing through."
The joke is of course, that neutrinos are very tiny particles that usually just pass through most objects; you hardly ever get to see them interact with matter. They were just "passing through" the bar. It's a funny joke, but it would fall flat if the listener didn't know anything about neutrinos.
Try as I might, it's hard to find the right type of joke! Most humour on the planet seems to be wicked in some way; if not 'dirty', the fun is at someone's expense. So begins my search for good, clean humour, that I can relay with peace of mind to a third person. So also begins my effort to become a better joke-teller. It's funny though, to think that my search for something as vital as a job has to be punctuated with something like the search for humour. It's serious, and it's hilarious.
