10)
Q: Is that report ready?
A: Yes, I told everyone except you.
--Patience, dude. I know what you need. I have always told you as soon as it becomes ready. I have never been late.
9)
Q: Why are you here so early / late?
A: I actually live here. Please don't tell anyone.
--Okay, first of all, you're here too. And... what are you doing? Working? No way. Also, neither of us spends our free time by coming to this building to talk to our co-workers. Go away and let me get this done.
8)
Q: What are you working on?
A: Just managing expectations.
--Look, you wouldn't understand everything I do if I had a nymph tattoo the explanation on her ass and feed you blow-covered berries off it. Just tell me why you are in my office. It can be as simple as: "I don't feel like working for the next five minutes, let's talk about something stupid."
7)
Q: Did you see ____ on TV last night? (wait for it...)
A: No, go away.
--It is not really the question that is the irritant here, but often, after the response of "no", they will insist on telling me all about it. Everything is on the internet. If I wanted to watch it, I would have. If I wanted but could not, I would have watched it later. Everything is on the internet (we covered that already). So I haven't seen it because I had not the desire. But now I know who to blame for the success of stupid television.
6)
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: Well, that question kinda answered itself. Cool, eh?
--Perhaps the one question that could be argued off of this list -- but keep the small talk to a minimum. I am seriously not here to get to know you. I need to know enough about you to know where you are coming from so we can get this work done and get on with our lives.
5)
Q: Which way do you go when you leave work?
A: Towards my house...
--Who cares? When you're stuck at traffic, I hope you are thinking about porn or a steak or punching a zebra or really anything but whether or not I am stuck in the same traffic. Get a life, preferably your own.
4)
Q: Who was that?
A: The Chairman of the Board. He told me to direct the next person to ask me that to the CEO's office. Go ahead, he's expecting you.
--Get to know your co-workers. Or don't, whatever. But for as anti-social as I am, I shouldn't know more people than you do. Maybe I just do more work for more people than you do.
3)
Q: What is your job title?
A: Minister of Speculation, Reticulation Division
--There are between 1 and 100 motives for asking this question but there are 0 good ones. Move on. If the motive is so you can better understand what it is that I do here, I refer you to #8.
2)
Q: Feeling better? (after being out for a sick day)
A: Well I'm not hungover anymore if that's what you mean. Plus I actually needed to get some work done so I came in today. But technically I was fine yesterday so "no", to you answer your question. Go away.
--Some people just don't really ever get sick. I don't know why; I'm not Dr. Who. These people skip work when they are really hungover or caught up on work and don't feel like going because it's nice out. Others get really sick, and often. They stay at home on their worst days. Either way, when we return to work, we are under the assumption that the people we see all felt as though they were healthy enough to come to work that day -- and we cannot seem to comprehend why someone would conclude that we operate under some alternate reasoning system.
and... no surprise
1)
Q: Can we schedule a meeting?
A: No. You're a moron.
--I just explained to you everything you need to know. Why do we need to have a meeting to "go over this" or to "get everyone on the same page".
--"Go over this" rant... We just "went over" this -- if you don't understand, tell me and we will try again. I understand that this is practically a foreign language to you -- after all, I don't understand your job either. I don't really care to know everything about your job but I am not letting you out of my sight until I understand enough to get this task done. So tell me what you don't understand about mine and we will get this solved in the next five minutes, not a week from next Tuesday.
--"Get everyone on the same page" rant... There's a copier; make copies of your notes and give them to the proverbial "everyone" and let me get back to work. If we have an understanding, you should be able to not only regurgitate your notes to others but also explain them.
