The modern workplace has always been a source of comedy for decades, though very few people are willing to openly admit it. Many executives believe that humor and laughter are unproductive or unprofessional, and that being serious and gloomy is the only respectable way to spend their work life. As a result, most modern offices have become extremely humorless, artificial, and stressful places.

But we don’t have to be humorless to run a business. In fact, the ability to laugh at yourself and your work is one of the true qualities of great and successful leaders. A good sense of humor can defuse tension, lighten difficult situations, and even help solve complex personal and business problems creatively. To do that, you must be willing to think in atrocious, ridiculous, and illogical ways. Modern management consultants like to call this “thinking out of the box,” but I prefer to call it old-fashioned creativity and humor—something that has existed for centuries.

Top Secret Business Humor is a collection of witty satire inspired by the corporate jungle—its processes, performances, strategies, customer obsessions, endless meetings, quality crusades, and the daily dramas we endure for several hours a day. This book invites you to explore the creative and wackier side of office life—to laugh, to reflect, and to rejuvenate your day. All chapters are entirely fictitious and best taken with a pinch of salt (though the paper may not be edible). The author makes no representations or warranties of any kind regarding the accuracy, usability, or usefulness of the contents.

So, go ahead—get serious about adding some humor to your life.

AUTHOR'S NOTE 2026

Back in the mid-1990s, long before social media, apps, smartphones, memes, or even widespread email, I was one of the writers and editors of a small in-house newsletter in my office. It was our pre-internet version of “corporate entertainment,” filled with jokes, satire, and lighthearted reflections on everyday office life. Many of those humorous pieces became quite popular among my colleagues and friends.

A few years later, in 1999, I compiled those articles into a small paperback titled Thoughts, and later I renamed it as Top Secret Business Humor and published it on Amazon. It was my very first book with a simple layout and size, yet full of laughter and good memories from a time when faxes, floppy disks, and spool tapes were considered cutting-edge. The book captured the flavor of that pre-digital, pre-email corporate era when Mad Magazine was extremely popular worldwide and nobody cared for political correctness. That was an era when today’s hyper-productivity culture, buzzwords, and corporate jargon had not yet taken over. People still had time to laugh at themselves and at the absurdities of office life without feeling guilty about not “optimizing” every minute.

Now, more than two decades later, I am happy to bring this little time capsule back to life. This 2026 edition comes in a refreshed 7×10 format, with cleaner fonts and light editorial tweaks, but the content remains true to the original spirit. If you have ever worked in an office, you will find these pages familiar, funny, and perhaps even comforting. Think of it as a nostalgic trip into the office humor of the ’90s, a gentler, slower world that still managed to be hilariously chaotic.

Thejendra Sreenivas
www.thejendra.com
Bangalore, 2026