I’ve heard people say in public, “We’re so politically correct now laughing at the wrong joke can get you fired”.
I would normally think it’s hyperbole but there’s been news stories of kids in school getting suspended for laughing at the wrong joke, and I was once given a talking to by my boss at work for laughing at the “wrong” thing on TV there and someone reported me, so I am curious if this has escalated to such.
(For those who are curious, apparently there’s a rule at my work against watching Jerry Springer on any TV while eating lunch, but fellow employees will still turn it on. A certain employee apparently got that rule instated, and while everyone was watching Jerry Springer on TV and laughed at an over-the-top fight I got singled out by them since I’m a supervisor and should have been leading “a better example”)
There aren’t a lot of jokes that I would think laughing at would be a firing offense, but managers & owners do a lot of things with poor justification.
That said, I can think of a few “jokes” that are justifiably firing offenses - practical “jokes” that hurt someone* or drive away customers, Holocaust “jokes,” lynching “jokes.”
*Or could hurt someone
Not fired, but Back in the early 90’s I was working for an Ambulance District and we received a memo that in part stated; “Levity will not be tolerated in the work place”. It turned out that our boss was in a serious meeting and left his office door open. We were down the hall in the kitchen and were laughing. I couldn’t tell you what we were laughing at anymore other than it was completely innocent, no off color jokes/language etc, just laughing. The boss was a very odd person and would send knee jerk memos like this on a regular basis.
We chipped in and would buy his secretary lunch every now and then so she could give us a heads up when he had meetings with his door open.
In similar circumstances, a long time ago, working a minimum wage short term job, the supervisor was out on a Friday afternoon and we were all joking around and laughing. The workroom door was open and someone in an office across the hallway was on the phone with a higher up and we got loud enough to be overheard. We were all threatened with dismissal if there was ever an incident like that again.
But it wasn’t the joke, simply the perception that we were goofing around instead of working.
I work in a store owned by Orthodox Jews. If I started joking about the Holocaust (I would NOT do this) or Nazis or something, I’m sure I’d be called out. If I continued, they would fire me.
In most of the United States, management doesn’t need a justification; you can be fired for pretty much any reason or no reason at all. Outside of civil rights issues (e.g., fired for being black) or certain retaliatory issues (fired for filing a wage claim or an OSHA report), this is legal. I don’t like what color shoes you wore, I don’t like that you’re a Cowboys fan, I felt like firing somebody today … all legal reasons. Given that, I’m fairly certain that somebody somewhere has been fired for laughing at the wrong time, and also fairly certain that it would be difficult to find evidence beyond anecdotes.
I worked for a guy who was completely inappropriate and pretty much a total asshole. He went to a new post in Africa and I left the Foreign Service. I was told by a mutual acquaintance that he made a totally inappropriate joke about the Columbine massacre in front of his new ambassador. He was put on the next plane back to Washington and was fired.
You mean that when someone trips the kid on crutches and shouts “Look at the stupid crip!” that the crowd around the tripper points and laughing can also get into trouble, just for laughing at a joke?
I think it’s important to maintain the distinction here between telling a joke and laughing at a joke; the OP seems to be wanting to focus on latter rather than the former. Telling a joke is a volitional act; you can not do it. Laughing at a joke is to some extent involuntary; and the psychology of laughing can be more complicated than “Alice laughed at that; ergo, Alice thought it was totally appropriate, not to mention a hoot!” People can be surprised into involuntary laughter, even at something they sincerely think is really inappropriate and awful.
But that’s not the question in the OP - the question is whether they were fired for “laughing at a joke”, with the clear implication that it’s for laughing at some kind of ‘non-pc’ topic. Things that I don’t think count:
Being fired for making the joke - this isn’t getting fired for ‘laughing at’.
Being fired for laughing at a joke that would also not be OK in the 1950s, like cracking jokes about the CEO’s failed marriage.
Being fired for laughter itself, like Emergency 911s example, or for something like laughing when a funeral is going on.
Being fired at the end of a long chain of offenses - if you’ve been written up for a dozen things and this is the last straw, it wasn’t this thing alone, you’re getting fired for the sum total.
My experience is definitely that unless the company is hilariously unstable, the worst that happens on a first offense of laughing at some awful racist joke is that the teller might get in serious trouble, but other people are told that kind of thing isn’t cool and probably don’t even get a formal reprimand.
It would not surprise me that a couple [bigots] could be yukking it up about the [gender, ethnicity, religion] over in Marketing, and run afoul of HR. “But I didn’t tell the joke, I was only laughing at it” being the post hoc defense. “Oh man, they fired me for laughing at a joke.” No, you were fired for contributing to harrassment or creating an unsafe workspace.
Telling a joke, yes, certainly. Laughing? I doubt it, but many states can fire at will and there are quite a few crazy power mad bosses out there, which will fire for anything.