What Your Sarcastic Employee Isn't Telling You

By Vanessa Van Petten

There's always someone in the office who is the "class clown" who gets everyone's spirits up by jokingly putting one person down. Sarcastically, of course. So it's not really mean behavior then, right? However, new research reveals that sarcasm is merely thinly-veiled meanness, a way of covering contempt or hate because the person making the pun believes their words are less hurtful than their victim thinks.