Hey how to listeners, we're off again this week, so we're bringing you the second in our two-part series on humor in the workplace.

This week you'll learn how to crack jokes without offending your coworkers.

I'm going to pass the mic to former host

Amanda Ripley and we'll see you back here next week. I don't know if it's just that I

like to make jokes about cancer or what but the number of stories I have

about inadvertently alienating people would take that's a whole

podcast that we're gonna do a spin-off series called Michael stepped in it comma again.

Welcome to How To I'm Amanda Ripley. You can't talk about humor without talking about

jokes that bombed. So I want to start today by sharing a personal story that still makes me cringe. It was years ago when I was

working at Time magazine and I was briefly and inexplicably put in charge of the

Washington Bureau, which meant that I was managing people.

All of a sudden, I went from being a reporter to a manager.

And oh my God, it was terrible.

What I learned is that managing people means listening to them come in your office and complain all day.

That's how I saw it.

So at the end of my tenure we had a little happy hour and I realized way too late that I should probably give a toast.

So I decided to try to make it funny and I was not prepared, which was my first mistake.

So I stood up in front of my colleagues,

most of whom were older than I was,

and I said,

so what I've learned here is that managing you guys

is like managing a bunch of five-year-olds.

...