don't speak

I do my very best to have little to no interaction with my co-workers. After countless jobs at a vast number of different places and interactions with hundreds and hundreds or co-workers, I like to just go in to work, silently do my job, collect my paycheck and go home. Sometimes, I can't avoid it, but for the most part, I quietly just do my work.

Plus, the overwhelming majority of my co-workers are idiots. 

There's a guy at work who fits that description perfectly. I have written about in office antics before. I am not quite sure what his actual job is, but if you were to observe him on a typical work day, you'd think he was hired to wander the halls, loudly sing the wrong lyrics to classic rock songs and sit in his office and sneeze at top volume. 

For the past five years, I have done the layout and design of advertisements for a chain of supermarkets in the New York/New Jersey area. I work exclusively on their in-store ads. Nothing else for them. They do other promotional pieces — I suppose — that I have absolutely nothing to do with. At least once a month, this guy asks me if I received any of this supermarket's postcard layouts. I explain that I do not do their postcards or any other of their promotional work... just the ads. He asks if I saw any postcard designs on their FTP site and I tell him that I do not access their FTP site. Ever. He then confirms that I have not received any of the postcard designs and I tell him I have not. This week, we had our monthly conversation regarding this market's extraneous promotional materials, except instead of postcards, he asked about calendars. I offered my standard reply — substituting "calendar" for "postcard" in this case. He nodded as though we have never had this conversation before and walked away from my desk singing incorrect lyrics to Heart's "Magic Man."

During the week, I overheard this guy talking (loudly) to a woman who works in my department. They were discussing an unusual amount of large trucks with movie equipment in the Philadelphia area. This guy said he heard that they were filming scenes for the second season of the HBO drama series Task in the area. She said she had never heard of the show. He proceeded to get her up to speed...

"It's that show with that guy. You know, that guy who was in that Hulk movie. You know that guy. Did you see that show Mare? You know, that Mare show?"

"I don't know that show either.," replied my department co-worker.

He continued to enlighten her. "It was that show about people talking with a Philadelphia accent."

Mare of Easttown starred Kate Winslet and Jean Smart. It was a gritty, graphic police procedural series of which Task is a loose continuation. Mare of Easttown followed the interwoven tale of a police detective investigating a murder in her small Philadelphia suburb while simultaneously dealing with troubles in her personal life. When it premiered, it received a lot of buzz locally due to the publicity surrounding British-born Winslet learning and perfecting a very difficult Delaware County accent. Although it was an added novelty among those of us in the Delaware Valley, it was hardly a plot point for the rest of the country who tuned in.

But it wasn't lost on this guy.

And... once again... this is why I don't talk to my co-workers.

 www.joshpincusiscrying.com