Day 1.013: That's funny

There is an accepted wisdom amongst British people that Americans have no sense of humour (or at least irony). It's not true of course - and we know it. We enjoy American comedy and know of lots of American comedians (some of them - on investigation - turn out to be Canadians of course, but that's a different story).

So where does the belief come from? My theory is that it is not the 'what' or 'how' of comedy that is different so much as the 'where' and 'when'.

An example was when a man came to the house to say that he'd noticed that no-one was registered to vote and would we like his help. I explained that we were not citizens and therefore could not vote. As he turned to leave I called him back. "Actually there is one US citizen in the house - my seven month old son!" He turned, in all seriousness and said, "No, you need to be 18." He was just doing his job and - whether he detected the irony in my comment or not - he was going to give me a straight answer.

While my ex-pat colleagues and myself have been dealing with culture-shock as a result of being here, our new US colleagues have been dealing with the culture-shock of having us here - among them our 'inappropriate' workplace humour (and no I don't mean inappropriate in the sense of anything that our HR department would frown upon). They're getting used to it now, but I still have a nagging doubt as to whether they actually get it. I like to think it's just that they don't expect humour to be so widespread in the workplace.

I suppose they can be thankful that due to the fish-in-a-barrel rule they have avoided most of the new-employee tormenting so common in the UK. Who hasn't been sent in search of a left-handed screwdriver or stood for hours at the stores having been sent to ask for a 'long weight'? Well, not me of course - not more than once anyway.