I spent the bank holiday weekend in Northampton with friends. They live there because it’s too expensive to live in Oxford. When I asked K if the commute (a 2 hour round trip) was a pain, he said he’d got used to it and it wasn’t so bad. What he actually disliked most about his job was ‘inane colleague conversations about non-work things’.

I completely sympathised with that, because it’s one of my pet hates too. It sounds so innocent (and even unfair/judgemental) in the grand scheme of things, but it’s one of those niggles that grows over time. It’s one of the things that makes an average day a tedious day, and a bad day a really bad day.

I wrote a post recently about boredom, and there’s nothing that speeds up that feeling more than the phatics of everyday work life. I honestly do not care about how much you drank this weekend or you’re planning to drink next weekend. I don’t care if you’re really excited about eating a burger tonight or if your washing machine’s broken or how many grams of carbs you can eat this week or what you think of what X is wearing today.¹

Following on from that, I hate the fake drama too. Life is difficult and complex and strange enough as it is without making stuff up. Which then people are going to endlessly discuss and figure out where the holes are and generally have a massive bitch about. I hate that.

You’d think that actually it would be quite nice to balance some of the craziness of my life with some inanity. But that’s not how I work: I like purpose in everything. If the biggest thing in your life right now is washing machine problems, I’m horrified on your behalf.² If you’re making stuff up because your life is that boring, then do something you’ve never done before. Or find out about something you’ve never researched before. Or go on fucking Reddit.

I hate that all this stuff actively annoys me now. I have a very low tolerance for people as it is, and it’s even lower for people I’m forced to spend time with. Generally, if I’m forced into that kind of conversation, I’ll make my participation as minimal as possible. If you have something interesting to say or a genuine problem, that’s different altogether. There’s an art to making things interesting, and that art fundamentally consists of an interesting story (humour optional but very welcome). When I’m at work, I’m not really interested in that stuff. For me, conversation has a place and should have proper time dedicated to it in the right context. They say you shouldn’t eat your meals in front of the TV because you won’t appreciate what you’re eating. I say you shouldn’t have conversations in front of a screen because conversation suffers in exactly the same way. If people have to fish for ages about something they can say in response, or you wouldn’t expect people to comment if you posted it on social media, or you know that someone’s busy with something else, don’t open your mouth in the first place.

And if that makes me a bad person, so be it. I’m so ready to move on.