It makes me think that they are a weak “rules lawyer” type, who are more interested in always having plausible deniability/coverage of their own ass than actually leading their team.
Sometimes we joke about things to reduce fear, but sometimes joking about things normalizes them.
I get bureaucrats talk about building slow and expensive process controls to prevent someone from doing something stupid. I counter with the fact that we don't need the controls because my employees know I will simply fire the person if they do it.
- You’re eating too much and we can’t afford you, we will giving you to human traffickers for free.
- If you go out and play before finishing the homework you will be eaten by wolves.
- If you don’t obey the cops are going to arrest and execute you.
- Stay away from dogs or it will bite your pp off.
- Oh we thought you were useful when we found you in the trash can, it turns out we’re wrong and we’re going to throw you back.
And there are hundreds of variants or so. They must have an anti-fortune cookie database kept under their pillow… So pathetic.
Cultures that think this behavior is ok are the fucking worst. I would never ever do that if I had a child.
I found the tone of voice most significant in this kind of situation. When it was “smiley, jokey”, I would get it was a joke – but even mock seriousness or, worse, exasperated parent, was completely credible.
I grew up in Asia. I guess it's one of those cultural differences, like calling people "fatass" or drinking on the street without a shirt is not too inappropriate in some places. So people would have to shrug it off, try to adapt, and try to think those are just jokes without bad intentions. But still, it hurts and it does have life-long negative impacts on many people as far as I can see.
On top of that, I find people from better-educated families, or people from many other provinces in the same country don't share the same experience as us. My guess is economic and education status helps. From what I can see, the current generation of kids does receive substantially less abuse than say three decades ago.
Not helping you advance or making your life difficult, yes, managers can do that, but in general in all the organizations I've seen (in IT corps and finance; perhaps industries like e.g. fast food are very different) if a manager would really want to get rid of someone, it would take them months of "political effort" to try and do so (and they might still fail), because they really did not have that power to just fire someone.
I work at a large company with separate engineering/management tracks, and gaining any visibility into the business from the engineering floor is like pulling teeth. For example, I've been blindsided by reassignments that are technically voluntary but I know if I make a stink about them it'll hurt my reputation. I certainly wasn't consulted about the problem my re-assignment addresses until it was happening. That lack of context creates an environment where employees have to read the tea leaves from the drips and drabs of information they can get, a joke about firing would definitely prompt me to update my resume, just in case.
However a slight variation about joking with kids that I find does work surprisingly well is the totally exhagerrated consequences. But it really has to be totally over the top and utterly unbelievable, the sillier the better. It simultaneously breaks the impending mood of conflict, makes them laugh, while somehow actually motivating them to do what they are resisting. We all know it won't be the real consequence of them (not) doing whatever, but it still seems to work. It's weird. Doesn't always work of course (nothing with kids ever does), but a variation on the theme has frequently helped.
And that was the time the class decided to go to our head teacher and tell her that his jokes were not funny at all and she reported back that our chemistry teacher was surprised about how someone did not appreciate his brand of humor.