Use Humor to Make a Complaint More Effective

When you're complaining about bad service or a problem to the boss, it's easy to get frustrated with a situation, but Psychology Today points out that humor is a great defense, provided you do it right.

Using humor when you're complaining is all about striking the right tone and taking the edge off the complaint so it's easy for the recipient to swallow. To that end, Psychology Today suggests a few ground rules:

1. If our humor is too heavy handed, our complaint won't be taken seriously.

2. If our humor is too offensive it can make the recipient even more defensive than they would have been if we just told it to them ‘straight'. The line between funny and offensive is not only thin it is also subjective. What some people consider funny, others might find insulting.

3. If our underlying tone is too condescending, angry or sarcastic it will cancel out the ‘funny' and we are unlikely to get the result we want.

4. The biggest danger we face when using humor to complain is that our efforts might come across as simply—not funny.

Stand up comics have been doing this for years, but adding a bit of a joke to any old complaint you need to make can turn a potentially uncomfortable situation into something a little more pleasant. Just remember not to be a jerk about it. Head over to Psychology Today for a couple different examples of how (and how not to) use humor in a complaint.

Does Humor Make A Complaint More Effective? | Psychology Today

Photo by Britta Frahm.