Job demands, like time pressure, use up employees’ restricted resources, which need to be repaired via recovery in order to uphold psychological well-being and work achievement. Employees in high-strain jobs must refill their emotional resources throughout the work day. This can happen during breaks if employees are capable to psychologically disconnect from the work demands. Given the stress-relieving functions of humour, it was supposed that affiliative humour during pauses would weaken affective deteriorations linked to time pressure and would lower negative emotional spillover from pauses to subsequent work. This study conducted mitigated mediation assays with bootstrapping based on a cross-sectional sample of 170 employees working at four retail stores. Time pressure was positively linked to affective vexation, which in turn was linked to more spillover of negative (and less spillover of positive) mood from pauses to work. Laughing with colleagues during pauses mitigated the link between time pressure and affective vexation, such that this relation became nonsignificant when the frequency of joint laughter during pauses raised. Hence, enjoyable social break activities seem to be important for within-workday recovery. Employers should foster their employees to take their pauses systematically and to interact with nice colleagues, especially during periods of high work load.