Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Where did Americans get the assumption that if I work in the same office with other people, they\u2019re automatically bosom buddies entitled to know everything about my life, and entitled to regale me with humorous anecdotes about every detail of their lives?<\/p>\n
If I wanted to know about your kid\u2019s Cub Scout dinner last night, I would have asked.\u00a0 If I wanted you to know the details of my weekend, I would have told you.<\/p>\n
Am I a curmudgeon, or is everybody else a gasbag?\u00a0 Or both?<\/p>\n
I asked a friend who said: \u201cYes, you are a curmudgeon. \u00a0The other people are being sociable.\u00a0 They are assuming (apparently incorrectly) that you are socially engaged with those around you. \u00a0It’s a social contract. \u00a0When trapped in an elevator or mine shaft or cube farm for 8 hours, you talk\u00a0a little. \u00a0You work in a government bureaucracy, so your social contract requires even more talking, plus loafing, web surfing, coffee drinking and paper shuffling.\u00a0 There are other rules the social contract. \u00a0You are not required to engage in certain topics, for example. \u00a0Although that’s where the problems tend to arise these days since under the new and improved version of the social construct you are expected to be diverse, agreeing with the Liberal mantra at every opportunity in your own unique way.\u00a0 That\u2019s something you\u2019re no good at; hence, the curmudgeon label.\u00a0 You should work from home making millions in your spare time, I see ads for those jobs every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
I suppose he\u2019s right.\u00a0 Only 13 years until I can retire.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’ve become very thankful that I get to \u00a0work from home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Where did Americans get the assumption that if I work in the same office with other people, they\u2019re automatically bosom buddies entitled to know everything about my life, and entitled to regale me with humorous anecdotes about every detail of their lives? If I wanted to know about your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62756,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62755\/revisions\/62756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}