Does anyone else have problems with sharing sarcasm?

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Hi, everyone.

First of all, I am an extremely sarcastic person. Probably half of my speech is sarcasm. What I have the most trouble with is sharing or reacting to others' (especially strangers') sarcasm. Most of the time, I go along with the person's joke, and be sarcastic back -- whether or not my response is in a sarcastic tone. This mainly happens at my job; I work as a hostess. I'll give several examples:

Guy: "I've never been to a restaurant before!"
Me: "Ha! Welcome! How do you like it so far?"
Guy: "You know, I was just kidding."
Me (smiling, thinking Yes, I was just playing along): "Yeah, I figured."

Another time:
Me (collecting silverware; about to leave the table): "May I take this for you?"
Guy 2: "No, I think I'll have two silverware sets."
Me (making the motion of eating food with an imaginary fork in each hand): "So you'll eat with two forks, like this?"
Guy 3 (handing me the extra silverware set): "Here, you can have it..."

And plenty of times my boyfriend has told me, "I was being sarcastic," when I was just playing along with whatever he's joking about. Plenty of times my friends have called me silly for this. My coworkers call me silly all the time for kidding around and making clever, sarcastic remarks. One of my coworkers decided to explain to us what type of character each employee would be, "if Max & Erma's were a TV show." According to her, I would be the funny one.

Can anyone else relate to this? Can someone tell me a more appropriate way to react to sarcasm, or how to signify more clearly that I'm just playing along? I really enjoy joking around when I can, and I'd love to be able to show it better! Thanks.

I have the same problem - nobody knows when I'm joking around. Maybe if you wink after you make a sarcastic remark? I dunno, just a thought.

i can be sarcastic, but because of my ToM problems i cannot understand it easily in others. In fact, most of teh time i miss it completely because i rely mainly on the verbal and cannot grasp facial expression AND vocal tone variation when they are all happening together. that means i am relegated to literal interpretation realm. and so the subtleties of sarcasm face to face can escape me.

you are doing pretty, pretty well if you can grasp and follow sarcasm in others AND play along with it.

Maybe they want you to make them feel special like just laugh at their bad jokes etc. When you make another joke that takes the energy away from them and most people have fragile egos.

my ASish partner has a very sarcastic sense of humor, which I am perpetually taking literally, and
I am really proud of myself when I can recognize sarcasm and go along with it...but it has to be very blatant and I have to be in the right mood.

I can use it sometimes, but i can't detect it unless it's "in my face" kind of sarcasm.

Thank you for the replies, everyone.

KaliMa, I probably should have mentioned that I'm not a good winker. For the past few days, I have been in the habit of adding, "just kidding" ...especially if people start taking me seriously. Hopefully, that will work out in the future. Any more tips would be helpful.

Pobodys_Nerfect, I also considered this recently, but it feels awkward to me. I'd like to have a smoother transition than just a laugh and then start a new topic. How can I pull that off? Are people taking my bad jokes too personally? I don't want to "attack" people's egos; should I stop altogether?

millie, the same thing occasionally happens with me -- missing sarcasm. It used to more often. I've learned how to better pick up "tones," or just pitches, like stressed words, or phrases that clearly aren't true. I'm probably just used to it by now, but it requires a good ear in order to pick up the habit. It took me long enough to learn puns, but now I use them every day. Just an eye roll (which is sometimes what I try doing, along with my new "just kidding" phrase) indicates sarcasm.

I have mistaken people's sarcasm as truth before, lots of times. When I asked someone, "How's the traffic doing now?" and he responded with something like, "Great," I believed him, reacting positively and relieved. That's when he told me it was really bad. I should have guessed that he was joking because I had problems in traffic earlier that day, which was actually the reason I had asked him for the update. This sort of thing -- asking for simple updates and getting sarcastic responses -- happens often for me.

I have great difficulty with sarcasm. Nobody gets it when I try and use it and at college a group of my friends used to play the game of making sarcastic comments they knew I'd take as straight and see how many they could pass over my head before I got it. I need some really heavy signals to grasp what's going on. Sometimes I wish my friends would carry emoticon flashcards for my benefit .

I have the problem that people can't tell when I'm joking sometimes, or going along with their jokes.

I generally don't get sarcasm, but I use it quite a bit. Would vote, don't know where it fits in...