This study investigates the role of laughter in video-recorded interactions between instructors and students during post-simulation debriefing in maritime education, focusing on how the sensitive nature of negative feedback is managed in interaction. The study demonstrates how laughter is used as an interactional resource in potentially delicate situations where student mistakes are exposed, and how serious and non-serious orientations are balanced in such a way that participants are able to raise and discuss substantive issues whilst treating student mistakes in a light-hearted way. It is demonstrated how laughter and non-seriousness tend to be reserved for talk about specific student actions and simulator events, whereas participants adopt a serious orientation to generalised conclusions regarding professional conduct. A further finding concerns a dilemma created by non-serious orientations in the description of student actions: while jokes and laughter are effective means of emphasising light-heartedness in relation to student mistakes, substantive matters are often left unspecified, which makes relevant subsequent reformulations marked by shifting back to a serious orientation. The analyses illustrate the interactional work whereby seriousness and non-seriousness, as well as receptiveness and resistiveness, are managed as interrelated and simultaneous orientations.