My fifth day working in a “regular” office, and by regular meaning a banking call center. I am not one of the call center automaton, rather I am one of the devs squirreled away in the corner working on apps. However there are only four of us and about thirty norms. The level of “normal” the call center people exude is unnerving to put it lightly. All my life I’ve worked with grown man-children, tom-boys, gamers, outcasts, geeky uber nerds, dice throwers, technophiles, obsessive fans, creative writers, over eager enthusiasts and artists (ug the worst). Conversations ranged from the best way to find the broken walk mesh to sneak into Old Iron Forge(got banned for a week from WoW back in the day), to the pros and cons of zombies in a the superhero universe(lame), to the best rub for brisket(add coffee yum), to a complete run down of easter eggs in (insert show of choice), to old V8 vs new V8 (not the drink folks), to paper vs ebook(you can’t smell an ebook), to cats vs dogs(dogs), to the best way to sew a button to leather(strong fingers), to what color pallet best conveys happiness(not so much the color as the tone), to the best hiking trails(canyons serve as a good intermediate level), to who was going to have to take one for the team and try the KFC double down (it was not good). Sure they were all insane, abstract, way outside the box, dirty snowflake, paste eating, social roadkill but damn did they make working together interesting/entertaining. Five days in I have only heard the same four types of conversation. “He said she said.” Thats it, no drama, no juicy gossip, just the most mundane exchange possible. “News item, followed by irrational opinion, followed by awkward discussion.” 100% of these news discussion could be stopped by Google. I say stopped because there is NO reason to carry on wondering about (insert aggregate). Seriously, just look it up before that illformed opinion slides out of your unrestrained word hole. And when I say irrational opinion I don’t mean an opinion I disagree with. I’ll amicably discuss a topic with someone who holds an opposing opinion all day long, hell I’ll play devil’s advocate if we share the same opinion. The kind of irrationality I’m talking about is like saying, NPC 1 - “Wallstreet fell eleventeen points today.” NPC 2 - “Gas prices are up because the kids have to go back to school.” And then the other three out of the five person discussion are nodding their heads as if the branch of wisdom had just come down and broken upon their heads. “Meme’s/Popular Internet” They discuss Meme, Internet jokes, and vocalize internet short hand. I don’t mean “Hey did you see (insert humorous image)?” No, They miss the point of the joke altogether and begin discussing something arbitrary unassociated in detail. But not interesting detail, detail that is made up of a ten word vocabulary peppered with ums, ahs, huhs, ands, and buts. And for the love of all things holy, do NOT vocalize internet short hand, whether it be “L O L” or “Lol” or “o m g” or “s h m” you are not allowed to say these things out loud, even for irony’s sake, unless you are under heavily the influence. Even then you should know better. “My kid, your kid, green kid, blue kid.” I understand wanting to talk about your children, they do interesting/funny/amazing/dumb things all the time. But these people do not even try to listen to each other. I swear to the almighty there were two women and a man talking about their children, to each other, AT THE SAME TIME. I don’t mean taking turns, or listen and reply. I mean talking right over each other and all three oblivious to the fact the other is taking WHILE making eye contact. There was NO way any of them could have heard a single word the other said. It is like they were competing for longest story. Last one to pass out wins. These are not crazy conversations, I would not classify any of them as nuts, or even interesting. Listening to them is like the regurgitation of last weeks conversation of the week before that’s regurgitation. Nothing that is said is worth while, sure you could say the same about any video game conversation but at the very least there is an application of knowledge and some degree of knowhow that comes into even the most worthless gamer talk. Here there is no food for thought, no creative spark, no chaos or order, just… blah. Writing this I am trying to recall one of the dozen conversations that went on just after lunch and can not grasp even a snippet. I guess the one thing working in the entertainment field was that we were less afraid to offend each other and were encouraged to follow our creative interests. Here from the outside looking in, it is like people programed to be people by someone that has little to no interest in making them act like individuals while trying to achieve the same result of unique interpersonal interactions. insert news topic > discuss > relay opinion using only information from the topic itself > discuss > listen > repeat co-workers opinion but rearrange words to make it sound unique > discuss > change subject to children > increase volume and rate of speech > pause > discuss how you laughed out loud at the cat image > discuss how you did not get the caption > make inference that too much time on the internet is bad > browse internet > find news topic > return to start and repeat What I am trying to say is I have an overwhelming urge to poke them with a stick to see if they are alive.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 21:33:31 +0000
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