Humor in the Workplace is a Gamble
An Iowa man who worked with Catfish Bend Casinos in Burlington was fired for posting a Dilbert 
cartoon on the office bulletin board. Apparently the boss didn't appreciate the comparison to a drunken lemur.
Dilbert creater, Scott Adams, offers this advice:
If you intend to mock your boss with Dilbert comics, the trick is in knowing which comics to pick. Apparently there is a fine line between posting a comic that criticizes a particular policy decision, versus a comic that calls your boss an inebriated prosimian. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)
It's important to remember that humor is in the eye of the beholder. If humor is used too much or at the wrong time in the workplace bad things can happen. A hostile work environment occurs when jokes, suggestive remarks, pictures, cartoons, or sexually, discriminatory or otherwise derogatory comments alter the circumstances of the workplace.
On the other hand, humor in the workplace is important to job satisfaction. I really can't imagine working in a place without some humor here and there. But at the very least it's best to still maintain professionalism and have a good sense of how people will react to your humor. Calling your boss a drunken lemur? Even Adams agrees that one was a little more cutting than the typical Dilbert strip. In an interview with the Register reporter he said, "I can see how this one may have been a tad bit over the line."
Nice post Rush. But what type of humor would be allowable? Isn't humor at its very nature a derisive swipe at convention? Wouldn't it be possible to find someone, somewhere who would be genuinely offended at anything you could possibly say that was funny?
In an employment at will state like Iowa, I would go out on a limb and argue there is simply nothing funny that you could say that would not run at least some risk of getting you fired.
Thank God my boss is the erudite, witty affable guy he is.
Brett, you are right. Anything you say or do could get you fired but I think people can use humor and still maintain professionalism. What are you advocating? That we should all act like accountants?
But seriously the use of humor in the workplace is a gamble - just as my title indicates.