This blog on Copyblogger.com provokes an interesting topic. We're all in an industry that at one time or another celebrates irreverence and humor.

However, at what point do we let the humor slide in favor of professionalism? As someone with a pretty wicked dry sense of humor and a penchant for even some elaborate practical jokes, suppressing my sense of humor is difficult. But in the past two years I think I've grown up a bit and find myself typing out something funny and then questioning exactly how someone would take it if they don't know me that well. Most of the time I find myself hitting delete and sending something more tame.

I've been burned enough by being misunderstood to know that although this makes life a little less interesting, it's probably a wise choice. Poorly timed humor can come off as immature, trying too hard, or not trying hard enough.

A friend of mine has a son who was looking for his first copywriting job. He sent me an email that was a parody of a viagra ad as a joke for his letter to me. I immediately kicked his ass because if it. If I didn't know him, surely I would have indeed thought I got a viagra spam, and not knowing where to buy it, I would have just deleted it.

I had repeated run ins with a coworker over my sense of humor. A senior account person had never worked with creatives before, and didn't understand that sometimes creatives blow off a little steam by being funny. Because this person had no limit to his sense of self-importance, I was told that he had "problem" with me and not to joke in the presence of his subordinates (who were on the email chain.)

Check out the blog I linked to and let me know your take. How has humor worked or backfired for you on the job?