Two workers walk into a bar after a hard day at the office. After a few beers, the first one orders a plate of hush puppies, eats all but one, wraps it in a napkin and then gets up to leave.

Curious, the second worker asks why he is bothering to take home just one.

"Givin' it to my dog tonight," replies the first worker. "He won't quit barking."

I made up that joke. And guess what? Usually no one laughs when I tell it in the real world. But when I told it at work once, people fell out of their desk chairs and almost coughed up their paper clips.

Humor in the workplace is a funny thing. Even if a joke's not that funny, it's funny at work. Humor in the workplace is refreshing. It's desperately sought. It's a way to escape from what is otherwise not so funny: work.

But laughter in the office does more than relieve stress and make the day go a little faster, new research shows. It also helps people be more collaborative and thus perhaps a bit more productive, according to a study published in Communication Currents.

Clifton Scott was one of the researchers who looked into laughter in the office. He studied firefighters and other workers in human service areas. What he found was that even in dire, life- threatening situations, workers found comfort and teamwork in humor.

"Humor isn't just a coping mechanism or a way to get through work," says Scott, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. "It's a way we do work together, a way we collaborate."

Think about the best team projects you've worked on. They probably included a little fun and joking along the way. Or the most popular guy at the office? He's probably the funny one. And the humor needed in the office doesn't necessarily come from a lame hush puppy joke.

"It's an informal, mundane and spontaneous kind of workplace humor," Scott says.

It's those quips and sarcastic comments. Yes, even those under-the-breath mumbles to co-workers about the boss's nasty earwax.

And if humor is good for workers and productivity, it's also great for management to latch on to. Bosses should realize if they hear laughter out in those cubicles, that it's a good thing.

Managers also may be able to use humor to read between the lines, Scott says.

"Humor tends to emerge around organizational pressure points — points of tension, uncertainty and ambiguity," he said. "One thing a manager can do is learn what employees are concerned about, what they are struggling to understand but are not asking."

Example: You have a stupid question you don't want to ask, so instead you make a joke to ask in a roundabout way. A good manager won't just blow that joke off, but will take a moment to explain the answer. Then he might tell you a joke of his own to relieve your tension. Like:

Question: What do you call a three-legged dog?

Answer: It doesn't matter. He can't come to you anyway.