SMALL talk is the office go-to for a reason – it avoids you discovering the extent of your colleagues’ awful personalities. Broach these topics at your own risk.
Politics
Think you can have a sensible political discussion? Hahahahaha. There’s bound to be someone who can’t focus on an actual issue and just goes ‘I suppose you’d prefer Corbyn?’ as if that’s the last word in any debate. Politics also includes immigration, so avoid unless you like hearing tabloid headlines repeated ad nauseum.
Conspiracy theories
Your heart will sink as you learn your union rep has a theory about the assassination of JFK involving holograms. Meanwhile your manager is convinced Area 51 has captured a ghost in a force field. Remember when you at least had professional respect for these dickheads?
Favourite comedy
It’s unlikely you’re a massive Bernard Manning fan, so hardly controversial, surely? Not if they butcher your favourite sitcom so that when you watch an episode now, you just hear Jeff going ‘I can’t believe you like that rubbish’. You later discover he hasn’t actually seen it, the twat.
Lunch
Sounds innocent enough, but anything vegetarian will be viewed with suspicion, as if instead of ‘I might have the vegetarian lasagne’ you’d said ‘Did I tell you I like making bombs?’. With luck your colleagues will just inform you that whatever you’re eating is too filling, not filling enough, too boring, too exotic, too salty or too sweet, or somehow a combination of all of those. Despite the fact they don’t have to eat it.
People in the workplace
Or ‘enemies’. No input required from you as they will deliver an unbroken monologue for 20 minutes about their cow of a department head. Unfortunately you’re now their eternal confidante who for some reason has to pick up the pieces after they start a blazing drunken row at the Christmas party.
Workplace crushes
It turns out the only thing worse than hearing about how much a co-worker wants to stab another is how much they want to shag them. There’s always too much detail, possibly down to individual sex acts, but what do you expect from a wanker who blabs this sort of stuff to a near-stranger?
Actual work
As horrendous as all of the above topics are, they’re preferable to doing actual work. So if you’re really bored with work discussions, ask whether they think Apollo 11 was a hoax or how they’d shag Tiffany from marketing – and what they’d eat from the office canteen afterwards.
