The Awkward but Essential Art of Office Chitchat

I’ve discovered that being quiet and/or not very responsive to inane chatter is both rather intimidating to some people, and makes you mysterious, so they continue to ask questions that seem obvious and/or inappropriately personal.

Of course a few people are unsalvageably annoying, but what this behavior sometimes means is they want to have some sort of conversation with you, but they don’t know how. They may be nervous about saying something wrong, and going for safe statements. One trick that has worked for me: acknowledge the statement with a smile and reply with a complete change of subject, asking them a question about their work or life. Statements don’t require a response, so don’t respond, but ask them a question instead that guides the conversation in a direction that’s interesting or at least tolerable for you. If you can appear interested, or better yet actually learn about the person and find some shared interests and/or shared context, you may be able to permanently change the annoying greetings into chit-chat you like.

Probably my most upvoted repeat HN comments are my recommendations of the book Impro by Keith Johnstone. It really is a brilliant breakdown of what Improv is beyond theatre games. I think it’s especially useful for coders in the workplace because it really nails the importance of understanding exchanges of “status” in these situations. So much of humour is building and then diminishing a person’s status in an artful way. Being aware of how you are displaying your status around others and being able to consciously manipulate that display for laughs goes a long way.

He has another book “for storytellers” that you can skip over for now. Get Impro, it’s a bit of a cult classic.

I work in education and it’s such an incredible skill for teachers as well. Controlling a class is easiest when you can establish your authority while simultaneously letting your students question it in a playful way. You can really break down a lot of walls and connect better.

Honestly its probably all body language.

My mom has the same thing. Random people just start telling her everything about their life, because she appears open and friendly.

If i'm in public, I usually look miserable (RBF) and have a very specific goal in mind. People don't just walk up to me because its obvious I'm not going to be receptive.

This.

I worked with someone who rotated the same asinine 1/2 dozen or so comments about me and my appearance or arrival time etc. It annoyed the shit out of me, but, I also realized he probably didn't know another way. Sometimes people are trying to find any way, in their limited ability, to connect with someone who is clearly smarter than they are. So they pick on you. A good first attempt to stop this is to try to connect with them. Sometimes that stops this behavior.

This really doesn't fall into the 'I need to report this person' category, but, my guy didn't stop even when I got to know him.

So, realizing he was stuck in a loop I came up with my own canned, corny, responses.

'Got your hair cut!' --> 'No, I got them all cut!' 'You are early today!' --> 'Yep, I couldn't wait to be here!' 'Red shirt today!' --> 'Yep, I read it before I put it on!'

Note: These are not confrontational.

Two things happened.

1. I didn't have to think about what to say but once, then I repeated that. Cognitive offload. 2. He began to recognize how repetitive he was and eventually he either said 'good morning' or nothing. A win for everyone.

I have a million stories of idiots at work who are intimidated by the smart, quiet computer guy and so they pull dumb shit like this.

The one I hate the most is when someone gives you a nickname.

Rarely is it flattering and I struggled with how to deal with that for a long time. We intentionally don't call each other names in my family so it was always bit jarring. I tried everything: getting mad, addressing it directly nicely, ignoring it hoping it would stop, joking about it.

Nothing worked, until I tried the following.

The very first time someone gave me a nickname, I immediately gave them one. It doesn't have to be mean, just anything really. If it has a little stank on it thats ok too. Just don't get personal. Idiots will give you a nickname and smile. So, do that too, smile. Then every single time you hear it, you say their nickname. You don't call them their nickname except as a response to hearing yours. That's the key. If you use it outside of this context it does not communicate your message.

Eventually they will stop or find someone else to annoy.

Oh god this is totally me haha. I worked as a cashier for 8ish years before getting into tech so I think it is just ingrained in me to notice inane details and use them to start conversations. It sounds like this person is just picking really really boring facts to attempt to start the conversation with.