Things we Weren’t Taught In School: Vol 2

We’ve all been in this situation. You walk into work in the morning, passing person after person, going through mental gymnastics trying to properly greet everyone. Because EVERYONE is different and if you give the wrong greeting you will needlessly offend someone. Some people, like my friend, prefer to ignore the existence of morning and are perfectly fine without a greeting. These are my favorite people. They are not beholden to some bullshit convention that insists I must not only acknowledge you but somehow feign happiness to be back at a place I will spend the next 8 hours desperately wishing I could leave.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the people that really do live in a Disney cartoon. They are greeted every morning by birds and squirrels and live with a song in their heart in their perfect little lives. I hate these people. There is no way I could EVER match their enthusiasm for life without learning I won a $300M Power Ball while enjoying a year long cruise around the world on Angelina Jolie’s yacht with Maxim’s 50 Most Beautiful Women. And these people are brimming with happiness and overjoyed just to be AWAKE and AT WORK. I wish I could be that enthused in the mundane but it’s just not in the genetic cards.

The only good thing about the Shiny, Happy People are they are so wrapped up in their own orgasm bursting joi de vivre that a simple head nod and a “Hey.”is usually enough to placate them. Much harder to handle are the middle of the roaders: those who can most easily be described as “normal”. Their moods are mercurial and shift seemingly with the weather. I freely admit I am one of them as are most people. Some days a simple head nod is sufficient. Others, you must confirm their existence by saying their name. Consider one of the most bizarre greetings out there. You walk into the break room and see co-worker Steve grouchily filling his coffee cup. He looks up at you as you approach, nods imperceptibly and says your name. You respond with a nod of your own and “Steve.” He stirs his coffee and leaves. The entire transaction takes less than 5 seconds but the greeting for the day has been completed and you are now free to engage Steve at any time over the next 8 hours or until one of you leaves the premises for the day without repeating the greeting.

You will repeat this ritual for the next hour or so with everyone you see. The morning air is filled with;

“Hey.”
“what up?”
“Good morning.”
“’sup?”

and my personal favorite,

“’Mornin’.”

No “Good morning”, just “Mornin’.” I take this as a subtle condemnation toward the position of the sun in the sky. A way of succinctly stating “I am aware of the time of day. I am unhappy about this. I’m so annoyed I’m not even going to pronounce the “g”. Please don’t bother me further, or I will shove your face into the paper shredder.” Eventually you learn which co-worker prefers the full fledged “Good morning, how are you today?”, which one prefers a quiet “Morning.”, and which is perfectly fine to ignore the whole shebang. However if you ignore someone that expects a “What’s up?” or worse, deliver a “Good morning!” to someone that detests acknowledgement, you can expect to be shunned for the next hour at least. This turns morning time into an extended and anarchic game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in which Paper does not always beat Rock and there are 97 different variations on the word “Scissors”, some of which can put you in timeout for the rest of the day.

The majority of us put the bare minimum into this inescapable morning ritual which leads me to wonder why we bother at all. Would the world come spinning off its axis and go hurtling into space if we eliminated this needless social convention from our morning routine? Why is this not a topic covered during our formative years in school? How many billions of hours would be saved if we all just decided to chuck the whole thing?

And don’t get me started on the head nods, the fist bumps, the point, and other forms of nonsensical nonverbal greetings. We’ll leave that for another day.