Mar 3, 2016

How to be around people - Lessons in Stupidity

I've known myself to be a colossal bungler of conversations. It's not a newly-acquired skill or trying to be that much more relatable but it's just something essentially missing in my head. Common sense, is what my gut says, and I've never really doubted it. From being casually funny to being an in-house embarrassment, my personality is a combination of most features a clown might die to have. Last night, our boss's place, I dropped a measly tomato piece next to his carefully placed plant and a fork eerily close to someone's shoes. When you do these things, you must always ask yourself - do I belong here? Try and quietly move to the other room before someone even notices the lettuce at their feet. Or, when you happen to tell people what others have named them. Strike that. Don't do that. It's not welcome. Back in mid-2000s, people may not have noticed with too much smoke in the room, but now you're probably earning more than you should and someone's bound to call you out. Or put it on the social media, but you're not in U.S. and in India, half of us are busy taking selfies anyway. Yes, you don't do much of that too unless you know how to crop your colleagues from photobombing pics with "Wtf are these two up to?" looks. You also don't, may I emphasise, tell your colleague's girlfriend that he skipped work to bring her to the party or tell her that he made her sit next to you in case there was a food accident waiting to happen. You don't mess with people's relationships. You take it easy and take a rain check for office parties.


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