Oftentimes when I am at the office (read: every waking moment) I am confronted with inefficiency, incompetence, ridiculous requests, and a general atmosphere of de-motivating, life sucking social interaction. I find that it is necessary to engage in as little of this activity as possible for the simple reason of preserving my sanity.
Though some would argue it is easier to simply come to work in the morning, carrying a gun pointed at your own head, and screaming "DO NOT MAKE ME FUCKING DO IT!" every few moments is a good way to avoid any and all social interaction, I find that the police, as often as not, frown on such activities.*
*Especially if you are not caucasian.
Therefore, to avoid any meaningful social interaction, preserving your sanity, I suggest the following tactic, which neither incriminates you, causes undue stress to the person-to-be-ignored, or, really, allows any passage of information whatsoever.
Step 1. Raise hands. I suggest palms facing the person-to-be-ignored, as showing the back of one's hands can be interpreted as needlessly aggressive. Aggression is an interaction; the point is to be as soulless to your coworkers as the working world is to you.
Step 1a (optional). Shrug & Raise Eyebrows / Furrow Brow & Look Away Slightly. Experiment with these. They are appropriate for different circumstances; the one conveys a certain sense of exasperation, while the other a certain amount of hopelessness.
Step 2. Repeat name of person-to-be-ignored over and over. Occasionally throw in "Okay?" or "Seriously," if so desired.
Step 3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 as necessary.
Effective, simple, it never wears out (because it was never really appropriate in the first place, and, if I do say so myself, is still a hell of a lot less annoying than the constant YouTube watching of a certain 5'9" woman who sits three desks down from me and doesn't realize I have poured a potent synthesized hallucinogen into her sanka), and it creates, above all, a sense of confusion in the person-to-be-ignored that might even be mistaken for the impression of having interacted with someone deeply engrossed in work! Perfect!
Tune in next time for the lesson in loud nose breathing: sure to ward off any form of social interest in one's coworkers. Silent and deadly? Hardly: Barely audible and extremely annoying.
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2 comments:
I find an easy way to end most conversations is to quietly sing a few bars of Frank Zappa's "Why Does it Hurt When I Pee?" Actually, it's best if you just recite the lines.
having a reverse engineering lab in your office makes for readily available solutions to the problem of the co-worker. i have a system set up where four DSLRs flash incessantly at the person who has approached me and the ensuing datastream is emailed to the company listserv, as well as posted on flickr.
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