A reader writes....
I'm noticing that I can't stand my colleague telling me all about her long weekend and she never seems to shut up. It's awkward as we share an office but I feel like screaming "can you please just STOP talking!!? "
What should I do?"
You tend to get two types of "weekend sharers" in an office - the type who never do anything except stand in a field watching children do sport and then repositioning them afterwards, and the type who are meeting for breakfast, elevenses, brunch, high tea, pre-prandial cocktails and then going to an experimental supper club based on gluten free vegetables cooked by an Amharic shaman in a water treatment plant above the Hillingdon to Hackney post office railway.
"....and then we chose our own turtle for supper...."
Of course the whole point of being the latter is to tell you all about it. A life lived alone is no life at all. Look at all these lifestyle bloggers compelled to shout their life story into an empty and uncaring void.
I feel you have a few courses of action:
1) try to channel her activities into an area which interests you. It may be cooking, travel, BDSM, human rights, films, BDSM films or whatever, so that you can perhaps get something out of those discussions.
2) turn into a topper, who can top every story she tells with an even better and more exciting, hip and shallow story, so that she soon gives up downloading her weekend to you.
3) come in one Monday and tell her that your partner died on Saturday and weekends are now too painful to talk about. Except for "Weekend at Bernie's" which of course remains your favourite film.
4) complain to HR that your are being victimised as she won't stop talking about her weekend and that is a form of bullying as you don't have exciting weekends (falling into the first category above) and you are putting the firm on notice that you will be logging the incidence of bullying. And writing to the Law Society Gazette to make the situation clear. Which will no doubt result in a massive campaign on behalf of all solicitors to change the workplace, co-ordinated by the Law Society, taking ten years to get going and resulting in nothing.
5) stop being such a miserable old fart and enjoy someone else's happiness and enjoy the sociability and camaraderie of your room-mate, which you so obviously lack. You are set fair for partner.
"Here's what I did at the weekend"
Get a life (literally and metaphorically).
I'm noticing that I can't stand my colleague telling me all about her long weekend and she never seems to shut up. It's awkward as we share an office but I feel like screaming "can you please just STOP talking!!? "
What should I do?"
You tend to get two types of "weekend sharers" in an office - the type who never do anything except stand in a field watching children do sport and then repositioning them afterwards, and the type who are meeting for breakfast, elevenses, brunch, high tea, pre-prandial cocktails and then going to an experimental supper club based on gluten free vegetables cooked by an Amharic shaman in a water treatment plant above the Hillingdon to Hackney post office railway.
"....and then we chose our own turtle for supper...."
Of course the whole point of being the latter is to tell you all about it. A life lived alone is no life at all. Look at all these lifestyle bloggers compelled to shout their life story into an empty and uncaring void.
I feel you have a few courses of action:
1) try to channel her activities into an area which interests you. It may be cooking, travel, BDSM, human rights, films, BDSM films or whatever, so that you can perhaps get something out of those discussions.
2) turn into a topper, who can top every story she tells with an even better and more exciting, hip and shallow story, so that she soon gives up downloading her weekend to you.
3) come in one Monday and tell her that your partner died on Saturday and weekends are now too painful to talk about. Except for "Weekend at Bernie's" which of course remains your favourite film.
4) complain to HR that your are being victimised as she won't stop talking about her weekend and that is a form of bullying as you don't have exciting weekends (falling into the first category above) and you are putting the firm on notice that you will be logging the incidence of bullying. And writing to the Law Society Gazette to make the situation clear. Which will no doubt result in a massive campaign on behalf of all solicitors to change the workplace, co-ordinated by the Law Society, taking ten years to get going and resulting in nothing.
5) stop being such a miserable old fart and enjoy someone else's happiness and enjoy the sociability and camaraderie of your room-mate, which you so obviously lack. You are set fair for partner.
"Here's what I did at the weekend"
Get a life (literally and metaphorically).
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Just like most other lawyers.
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