100+ Funny Work Quotes to Make Your Colleagues Laugh

Work can become mundane, stressful, and boring. You can add pep to your day with funny work quotes. They’re relatable and hilarious.

Person working on a laptop at their desk.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

Work is a part of life. There are good and bad times.

Sometimes the workday seems to take forever. You’re counting down the hours until you get to go home.

One of the best ways to cheer up and make time go by faster is with humor.

The following are funny work quotes to get you through the day.

Some are sarcastic, while others make fun of colleagues.

Regardless, they’ll give you a great laugh. Be sure not to read them in a meeting unless you’re willing to share them.

Related: Funny Birthday Wishes for Coworkers

Hilarious work quotes to make the daily grind bearable

1. “No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early.” -Groucho Marx

2. “If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.” -John Gotti

Funny work quote by John Gotti.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

3. “Why do people say they wish every day was Friday? If it was always Friday, we’d be here every freakin’ day.” -Ed Bernard

4. “I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.” -Charles Lamb

5. “Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired.” -Michel Tournier

6. “As I have gotten older and wiser, I discovered that there are six things that I really loved about my job. Payday, lunchtime, quitting time, vacation time, holidays, and of course retirement.” -Tom Goins

7. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” -Zig Ziglar

8. “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” -Douglas Adams

9. “Don’t you just hate it when you arrive at work and realize you’ve forgotten to bring your will to live?” -Unknown

10. “You can sit idle for days in your office but the moment you ask for a half day leave you become the strategically most important employee.” -Unknown

11. “What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.” -Phyllis Diller

12. “When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” -Henry J. Kaiser

13. “Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.” -Christina Rossetti

14. “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?'” -Don Marquis

15. “The world is divided into people who do things – and people who get the credit.” -Dwight Morrow

16. “Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.” -Satchel Paige

17. “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” -Vincent van Gogh

18. “By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” -Robert Frost

Funny quote about work by Robert Frost.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

19. “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” -Bill Gates

20. “People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.” -Ogden Nash

21. “The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.” -Sarah Brown

22. “The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.” -Casey Stengel

23. “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” -Adlai Stevenson

24. “You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

25. “I don’t wanna work. I just wanna bang on this mug all day.” -Michael Scott (The Office)

26. “People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” -Isaac Asimov

27. “Everything I have I owe to this job. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing job.” -Jim Halpert (The Office)

28. “When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy.” -Dave Barry

29. “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.” -Peter Drucker

30. “Doing nothing is very hard to do… you never know when you’re finished.” -Leslie Nielsen

31. “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” -Thomas Sowell

32. “I guess I’ve been working so hard, I forgot what it’s like to be hardly working.” -Michael Scott (The Office)

33. “The question, ‘Who ought to be boss?’ is like asking, ‘Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?’ Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.” -Henry Ford

34. “Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” -Lewis Grizzard

35. “I send pointless emails late at night to impress coworkers.” -Unknown

36. “Sometimes I have my headphones in at work with nothing playing so I don’t have to interact with chatty co-workers.” -Unknown

37. “Sometimes I feel like everyone I work with is an idiot. And by sometimes I mean all times. All the time. Every of the time!” -Kevin Malone (The Office)

38. “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you” -Billy Wilder

39. “First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.” -A Bug’s Life

40. “I work hard all day. I like knowing that there’s going to be a break. Most days I just sit and wait for the break.” -Kevin Malone (The Office)

Funny work quote by Kevin Malone from The Office.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

41. “There’s no better vacation than my boss being on vacation.” -Unknown

42. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet and I already can’t wait to come home from work tomorrow.” -Unknown

43. “Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, ‘Would an idiot do that?’ And if they would, I do not do that thing.” -Dwight Schrute (The Office)

44. “It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

45. “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” -Oscar Wilde

46. “Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy.” -Huey Long

47. “His insomnia was so bad, he couldn’t sleep during office hours.” -Arthur Baer

48. “It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.” -William Faulkner

49. “I’m working myself to death.” -Alan Ladd

50. “My husband changed jobs so fast that I simply never knew what business he was in.” -Rose Kennedy

51. “People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.” -Jeffrey Gitomer

52. “The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” -Robert Frost

53. “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.” -Harry S. Truman

54. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

55. “Life is too short to work so hard.” -Vivian Leigh

56. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” -Lewis Carroll

57. “The less you talk, the more you’re listened to.” -Pauline Phillips

58. “I don’t always tolerate stupid people. But when I do, I’m probably at work.” -Unknown

59. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

60. “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.'” -Dave Barry

61. “He isn’t a real boss until he has trained subordinates to shoulder most of his responsibilities.” -William Feather

62. “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

63. “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment.” -Robert Benchley

Funny work quote by Robert Benchley.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

64. “Here’s to another day of outward smiles and inward screams.” -Unknown

65. “Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” -Sam Ewing

66. “I work to stay alive.” -Bette Davis

67. “The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.” -Thomas A. Edison

68. “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.'” -Paul Tsongas

69. “It can be liberating to get fired because you realize the world doesn’t end. There’s other ways to make money, better jobs.” -Ron Livingston

70. “My sales objective is to get my prospects to look at my products the same way I look at bacon.” -Kurt Mortensen

71. “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.” -Joe Girard

72. “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” -Ray Kroc

73. “Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.” -Al Capp

74. “Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else.” -George Halas

75. “The problem with teaching a man to fish is that eventually somebody will microwave that fish in the work break room.” -Unknown

76. “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar.” -Drew Carey

77. “It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?” -Ronald Reagan

78. “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.” -Niels Bohr

79. “We all have this colleague who, we hope, quits his job so everyone in the office is happy. If you don’t know any such person, quit your job.” -Unknown

80. “If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday.” -Noel Coward

81. “Playing hide and seek in my office building because they can’t fire you if they can’t find you.” -Unknown

82. “Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said couldn’t be done.” -Sam Ewing

83. “Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.” -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

84. “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” -Steve Jobs

85. “Whatever you do, always give 100%. Unless you’re donating blood.” -Bill Murray

86. “The reward for good work is more work.” -Jonas Salk

87. “The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery on dead people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you’d get a pulse.” -Dennis Miller

88. “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.” -Henny Youngman

89. “It’s a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.” -Alan Alda

90. “Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?” -J. Paul Getty

91. “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” -Muhammad Ali

92. “It is better to have one person working with you than three people working for you.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

93. “Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They’re about to announce the lottery numbers.​” -Homer Simpson

94. “I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.” -Clarence Darrow

95. “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant.” -Scott Adams

Funny work quote by Scott Adams.
Photo by David Em/Humor Living.

96. “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” -George Carlin

97. “A baseball game is twice as much fun if you’re seeing it on the company’s time.” -William Feather

98. “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” -Jerome K. Jerome

99. “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.” -Oscar Wilde

100. “If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.” -George Carlin

101. “If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.” -Claude McDonald

102. “The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.​” -Stanley J. Randall

103. “Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.” -Andy Stanley

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Featured image by David Em/Humor Living.