In Praise of Canteens and Banter

Canteen culture and workplace banter get painted as relics of a toxic past, but the reality is they’ve long served as vital social glue in high-pressure environments — especially those where people face danger, trauma, or relentless grind. The push to sanitise them comes largely from a managerial, HR-driven, risk-averse worldview that prioritises optics over human reality.

In policing especially, the canteen has historically functioned as a repair shop for the soul. Officers return from shifts dealing with violence, death, or sheer absurdity; they need a space to decompress, share stories, and laugh at the darkness without judgment from the outside world. Sociologists like Peter Waddington pointed this out decades ago: what looks like crude “canteen talk” is expressive venting that gives meaning to chaotic, often thankless work. It builds unbreakable solidarity — the kind that makes someone run toward gunfire for a colleague they’ve only known a few months. When forces started closing canteens (many disappeared post-2010 austerity), they lost informal venues for emotional support, storytelling, and peer-to-peer mental health first aid. Former officers have openly argued for bringing them back precisely because the absence has worsened isolation and stigma around stress. The “corrosive” label ignores how much of that culture was protective, not predatory.

Banter operates on the same principle across trades, emergency services, building sites, kitchens, newsrooms — anywhere the job is intense and the stakes high. Light-hearted ribbing, nicknames, and piss-taking are a British (and broader Anglophone) shorthand for affection and belonging. Research from bodies like the Institute of Leadership and Management shows most workers see clear upsides: it helps people get to know each other, builds team spirit, reduces stress, diffuses tension, and makes the day more enjoyable. In small, repetitive, or dangerous jobs, shared humour is often the only thing keeping morale afloat. When it’s mutual and understood within the group, it signals trust: “I can take the mick out of you because I know you won’t break.” That’s inclusion on a raw, human level — far more genuine than forced “team-building” exercises or diversity posters.

The demonisation comes from a particular professional class — HR consultants, senior managers, academics, and media commentators — who view these practices through the lens of worst-case scenarios and tribunal risk. They see every edgy joke as a potential lawsuit, every in-group laugh as exclusionary. This perspective is heavily influenced by #MeToo, Macpherson-era reforms, and a generational shift toward hyper-sensitivity. But it flattens human interaction into something sterile. What gets labelled “banter gone wrong” is often just banter that someone outside the dynamic doesn’t understand or like — and instead of addressing that mismatch directly, the solution becomes blanket prohibition. The result? Workplaces that feel policed, humourless, and oddly distant. People self-censor, relationships stay surface-level, and the unspoken stress of the job has fewer outlets.

Of course no one defends genuinely malicious behaviour disguised as jokes. But the pendulum has swung so far toward caution that we’ve lost the nuance. A culture capable of dark humour is frequently more resilient, more bonded, and frankly more honest than one where every word is scrutinised for offence. The killjoys aren’t saving anyone — they’re just making sure no one ever has to feel uncomfortable, even if that means stripping away one of the few authentically human things left in modern work life. Bring back the canteen kettle, the nicknames, and the ability to laugh at the absurd without a safeguarding form — the place might actually feel worth showing up for again.