Has anyone ever actually been fired from work for "laughing at a joke"?

[TokyoBayer]

@Asuka

I would normally think it’s hyperbole but there’s been news stories of kids in school getting suspended for laughing at the wrong joket an ,

I have heard of studends suspended for tweeting jokes, but not laughing at them.

Is this really something that you have read?

Cite?

[Velocity]

To answer the OP, some examples:

NY Mets employee fired after being recorded laughing at private joke

r/videos - [deleted by user]

https://www.chipscholz.com/2011/05/19/positive-emotions-can-you-be-fired-for-laughing/

[MeanJoe]

@brossa

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.

Yep, this. My brother in law is a great guy but he lives and works in a very rural part of the midwest for a major automotive manufacturer. He is not racist or a bigot, he just has never had exposure outside of rural white Farmville where he has spent his entire life. Due to globalization he is now working more and more with people from other countries in his shop, specifically Pakistan, India, etc. He will tell us stories about this-or-that conversation at work that he thinks are perfectly harmless and funny about these coworkers and the things he or other white/rural coworkers say or “joke” about with them. I can absolutely see his company viewing these comments or jokes as fireable offenses if they were overheard by say someone in HR. And if that happened, he’d insist he was fired for laughing at a joke someone made or he was fired for just joking around. When I hear these stories, I am dumbstruck that he hasn’t been fired or at least counseled/coached by a superior that he was putting his employment at risk.

[Pantastic]

@Velocity

To answer the OP, some examples:

Only the first one might qualify as an example - but all we have is the employee’s assertion that he was fired purely for laughing at the joke. His description of events don’t say what the joke was, and there’s no follow up story about the formal complaint for discrimination he said he was going to file. So there’s nothing there supporting his claim, and he certainly had motivation to portray himself as an innocent victim.

The second one is a Belgian comedy sketch, not something that actually happened. The third one happened in the first half of last century, so doesn’t really seem to fit the ‘these days’ part of the complaint, and again is a case where laughing per se was forbidden, not laughing at a particular joke.

Actual examples seem to be really thin on the ground.