Attention. Attention Please!

   Remember back in middle school and high school when your classroom would get going on a hot topic and almost everyone in the class would chime in on the subject? And a certain few kids just HAD to share their own personal experience. Like, Sara would speak up on the topic of daylight savings and share how one time her dad forgot to set his clock back and he rushed out of the house and that caused him to get into a fender bender. And then some kids would share and it would only kind of relate to the topic at hand. Like Jeff would say, “Every year we buy new alarm clocks.” See, it only kind of related to daylight savings.


   Well guess what? These are the same people that work all around you today. You can easily identify them. They are the ones that when you go to them with a question they refuse to drop the conversation about themselves with a co-worker. I will give you an example.


   I go over to all-grown up Sara’s desk to ask why the pricing is wrong on an item in the computer system. Sara is talking with co-worker Jeff. Jeff just finished asking her when she is going to buy that new car she looked at. I interject, “Sara, this price came up as $549.99 and not $619.99. Is there an ad for this time frame?” Sara looks at me, pauses, and then tells Jeff “Well I will buy the Accord when they have their winter sell off sale.” Now, I did not specifically wait to ask my question right in the middle of their conversation. I just walked up and asked her.


   Work comes before chit-chat, but not to this generation. And I am part of this generation I am talking about. Guess what Sara and Jeff? You are not that important. The price for the ad is important right now. Talk about your fucking car later!


   I have co-workers, who say I am not being very social because I don’t specifically get up from my desk, go over to theirs and chit-chat with them. I talk with the people around me a lot while we are working on mindless things. That seems fine to me, everyone does that without issue. I would love to talk with you, except here is my problem: you will talk my face off for at least 20 minutes. I don’t want to commit to that kind of time. I will come over and talk to you for less than 5 minutes and then try to tell you with body language that I want to get back to work. Nobody in my generation gets it! They keep talking about themselves. They jump from one topic to the next. Once our topic is resolved I want to go, but then you sigh, make some inane comment and start in on how your time out last night was. I don’t care!!!


   I came over to ask you if we are off on Christmas Eve, a semi-work related question. By the time I am excused to leave your desk, and by that I mean you shut your face off, I have heard about how hung-over you are, what new video game you bought and how hard it is, what new movie you want to see, how your cell phone is broken and what your kids did that was annoying or cute. My consciousness left 13 minutes ago and while I look around your cubicle I nod mindlessly.


   It’s not that I don’t like you as a friend. You are cool, but learn when the conversation is done. I feel like I was verbally raped. You got to unload your mind but when I do the same thing you aren’t genuinely interested, so I learned not to do it. In fact, I like that phrase. I give it over to you, the masses. The next time someone won’t shut up on the phone or at work, or even if you run into a Sara or Jeff in the grocery store, say you were verbally raped.

That is all.