Office eavesdropping

Human social groups are amazing things. The way complete strangers can come together because of some need (work, religion, social cause, hate of zombies) and interact with each other is quite extraordinary considering the personal barriers we tend to put up around ourselves.

Sometimes though, I do wish we’d hold onto our barriers a little longer. There is a stark difference between conversing with purpose, and conversing to fill up the empty space between two people. Usually, office banter is of the second species. What do they talk about?

Well, fortunately for you, I have conducted a highly scientific and precise experiment revolving around this phenomena, by means of sitting around and eavesedropping on everyone’s conversations (hey, science isn’t always pretty, we must push the boundaries to find the truth!).

And so, my results, in no particular order:

Food
Apparently, humans love food so much, even when they’re not eating they’ll talk about it. Talk about what one’s going to eat for lunch, what one actually ate for lunch, where one got his/her lunch, and how one’s lunches just aren’t cooperating with one’s dietary tract. Amidst all this food-talk, humans are still capable of ingesting extraordinary amounts of fast food. Fascinating.

TV
It appears that when humans are not working, they all deviate to one single past time: watching television. For people who theoretically have only a few hours of free time once they get home from sitting in front of a computer screen all day, a large percentage of that time seems to be taken up by sitting in front of an even bigger screen. How else would they constantly be up to date on the latest American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Food Network shows, and hilarious GEICO commercials? Some subjects even peruse Youtube for the latest week old videos sent by their tech-savvy children. How they have time to eat their precious meals or intiate personal hygiene rituals is beyond the scope of my understanding, and will need to be researched further.

Children
Even after filling up after-work hours with eating and TV, the subjects are still capable of conducting intra-familial rituals throughout the week and dutifully report back to the office. One can often hear the life story of a child through the eyes of their mother/uncle/grandparent, who evidently lacks any need to minimize how annoying/adorable/stupid/smart said child is, with various examples to support their thesis. With my methodical researching style and eavesdropping abilities, I can say with 95% confidence that, yes, your granddaughter’s candy eating habits will indeed result in type 2 diabetes, and your son is probably on some sort of recreational drug.

Clothes
This appears to be not so much a conversation filler, but a sub-group I have deemed “conversation-starters”. Office subjects (usually, but not exclusive to, women) will initiate conversational protocol by expressing heightened excitement at the cuteness factor of one’s blouse, or the fashion sense of a new pair of shoes. At this point, the paired subject usually responds with tales of hunting down sales, matching outfit ideas, and lamentations of the shirt lost that looked almost like this one but that they loved so so so much better. Speaking of which:

Complaints
The glue that holds mankind together, the universal conversation topic and glorious social bonding staple that predates written history: complaining. Whether it’s complaining about the weather, aching body, stupid landlords, broken down cars, poor customer service, or basically anything that proves just how unfair life is, it’s all up for grabs. No conversation gets as passionate, no individual gets as talkative, than the ones that include some sort of gripe about life. Not just life in general, but their life. Why their life sucks, why something is wrong in their life, why something negative is undeserved in their life. It continues to amaze me just how much human beings can talk about only themselves – while in a conversation with other people, who are probably talking about themselves as well.

Granted, these results are not as conclusive as I would like and requires a bit more research, but generally I do believe these topics take up about 98% of the time spent talking in the work environment. The question of why is a whole different matter all together, and will be analyzed in a future report.

Stay classy, office folk. Science thanks you for being such willing subjects.

 

Reformed and educated

The past seems to have a strange relationship with us, and in return we call it by multiple nicknames. In moments of nostalgia, we look back and call it “the good ol’ times”, where your weren’t afraid of your children being abducted and raped and suave gentlemen existed who opened doors for ladies. Other times, we look back at past societal notions and call them “backwards”, adding little captions that further dub it “racist, sexist, bigoted, conformist” and many other smear campaign derivatives. Child abuse was rampant, wives were sub-human, “the white man” openly snubbed the lesser colored folk and walked around in the same grey suits and ties, living in the same cookie cutter homes, raising the same 2.3 kids and dog, driving the same massive, classic American cars. Drinking and smoking was more common back then than texting is today. Woe was the individual who stood out amongst the masses, the business driven wife, the aging and lonely bachelor, the disobedient child. Psychological and physical abuse and trauma ran amok!

The decrease in smoking and surge in suit color varieties has brought good to our lives, no doubt. But sometimes I really do wonder how “enlightened” we’ve all become compared to the past. Parenting manuals tell us not to treat our children like “back then”, that occasional spankings will scar them for life, and “cramping their individual style” will make depressed alcoholics out of the lot of them. If these things truly were as scarring and psychologically dangerous as we make them sound, shouldn’t our grandparents and the parents before them all have been raving mad and emotionally disturbed? Sure, we call our grandparents loony now, but that’s because they’re old and senile and can’t keep track of their teeth or remember how to use a remote.

In our age of psychological enlightenment can we really look back on the “good ol’ times” and honestly call ourselves that much better? When we’re self medicating left and right for every mental and physical disease we can create and becoming increasingly depressed, angrier, fatter, and not to mention the surging emo population. We’re trying to pass laws on bullying, for crying out loud. Do our playgrounds and conversations really need legal enforcement? For being so proactively individual and self supporting, we sure do try to get the government to help us out a shit ton with our parenting. But that’s a whole ‘nother post for a whole ‘nother day.

Even physically there are some strange side effects of modernization that even the past can’t compete with. Sure they used to have chopped up human and roadkill parts in our food while adding lead to our paint. Got rid of that? Great. But we have a higher chance of getting cancer now than ever before.

Maybe we’re only understanding that we’re more depressed and angry. Maybe this whole thing about individualism and opening ourselves up to the possibility of mental illnesses is only exposing what has always existed? Maybe our grandparents and family before them were always depressed and sexually frustrated, they just couldn’t show it. Maybe the stiff upper lip of the past has always been a cry for help and understanding.

Psshhhhh.