Office Speech

I've always been aware of this kind of behaviour, ever since i started working at the Glenrose way back in 2001, and it has always annoyed me. Office speech.

Office speech is the midless little phrases or quips that office workers exchange with each other as a means for having a conversation without really having one. Examples of such office speech include: "Working hard or hardly working?"; "We're having a safety meeting...as long as no one is working, no one gets hurt."; How the day of the week determines your mood - "hey how's it going?" "oh you know, it's monday"; "same shit different day"; and so on and so forth.

In my reasoning there are two reasons behind this kind of behaviour, a) it easier to regurgitate a small little quip that both are familiar with rather than engage each other in a real conversation - this serves the purpose of maintaining office relationships without getting too personal or sharing too much of yourself in the process. And b) because often it is a cordial way to acknowledge a fellow co-worker without stopping for a long, indepth conversation because often your workload doesn't allow for indepth conversations. If i really tried harder i could think up a thousand more reasons behind this little phenomenon but honestly i don't have the time.

I just think that something happens to the brain when it is forced to do the same monontonous task over and over again and a large institutionalized setting. People go a little crazy and they begin to decorate their desks with little objects to entertain themselves. stuffed monkeys that have been decked out with a tiny corsage of fake flowers is not interesting and does not warrent a 5 minute conversation!
Okay, getting a bit ranty here, i'd better end this post.