#OverheardAtWork
Elena is one of my super cool girl friends from Pennsylvania. How cool you ask? So cool she once danced so hard she broke her ankle. Ouch. Recently we were chatting about other painful situations when she shared her recent struggles with sub-par random office chatter. It’s a strange professional world out there, but Elena’s take on the blurry line between not sharing and over sharing with co-workers (and anyone in general, really) is worthy of immediate promotion. Take it away, Elena!
"I love sweatshirts, but I'm not crazy about embroidered sweatshirts." – Actual conversation overhead in my office. This man shall remain anonymous to protect his dignity. Although, judging by his flagrant sweatshirt conversation, I’m not sure he cares much about that.
Something’s been afoot. The people in my life who I want to hear from are being drowned out by people I think of as ‘megaphones’—irritating, loud, and only interested in being heard above the crowd. Primarily thought of as a chagrin of the social media world, I’ve been noticing this megaphone phenomenon more and more IRL. Give a self-interested person an inch, and they take a mile.
Online, I can hide you from my News Feed and unfollow your Twitter handle, but when you’re in my face talking about cat calendars for 45 minutes, what’s a girl supposed to do? Sometimes I wonder: Am I just a conversational curmudgeon, or do people actually enjoy these discussions? Was the guy on the receiving end of the embroidered sweatshirt diatribe into it, or just being polite and wishing for the fire alarm to go off?
I’ve realized lately that I’m a dichotomy—I’m friendly and chatty, and I love conversation, but I don’t like to bore people with the ‘little’ details of my life. Too often, I over-edit in my head, label everything as ‘boring,’ and leave out so many details that I end up not telling anyone anything of substance.
This is mostly a side effect of a condition I’d like to dub ‘workweek amnesia.’ Sometimes, in adulthood, it feels like the days blur together. Wake up, work, exercise (or, in my case, go to ankle rehab), eat, do (fill-in-the-blank) after-work activity, pass out. So when someone asks what I’m up to or how my week is going, I basically black out and can’t think of one single thing to tell them, even though hundreds of tiny things have transpired. I figure: Why would they want to know about the can of SpaghettiOs I polished off in 15 minutes (guilty pleasure) or the fact that I finally finished Jack Kerouac's On the Road?
But there are some things worth sharing. And maybe it’s time to reclaim the conversation. I’m done listening to water cooler chit-chat about used garden tractors (unfortunately, not a fictitious example). I have something to say, too, and it’s mildly interesting!
I pledge to share some of my small details and non-breaking news stories with others. I don’t want to contribute to the megaphone problem, but I do want to open up to the people who might actually appreciate hearing something about me. After all, these small, personal stories can spark bigger, deeper conversations, which I am always grateful for. As for the self-absorbed ramblers, I hope they take their embroidered sweatshirt chatter somewhere else.
Elena Douvanis is a marketing and social media professional living in the Lehigh Valley. She specializes in writing, eating good food, reading in an addictive fashion and putting together a rockin' party spread.
"I love sweatshirts, but I'm not crazy about embroidered sweatshirts." – Actual conversation overhead in my office. This man shall remain anonymous to protect his dignity. Although, judging by his flagrant sweatshirt conversation, I’m not sure he cares much about that.
Something’s been afoot. The people in my life who I want to hear from are being drowned out by people I think of as ‘megaphones’—irritating, loud, and only interested in being heard above the crowd. Primarily thought of as a chagrin of the social media world, I’ve been noticing this megaphone phenomenon more and more IRL. Give a self-interested person an inch, and they take a mile.
Online, I can hide you from my News Feed and unfollow your Twitter handle, but when you’re in my face talking about cat calendars for 45 minutes, what’s a girl supposed to do? Sometimes I wonder: Am I just a conversational curmudgeon, or do people actually enjoy these discussions? Was the guy on the receiving end of the embroidered sweatshirt diatribe into it, or just being polite and wishing for the fire alarm to go off?
I’ve realized lately that I’m a dichotomy—I’m friendly and chatty, and I love conversation, but I don’t like to bore people with the ‘little’ details of my life. Too often, I over-edit in my head, label everything as ‘boring,’ and leave out so many details that I end up not telling anyone anything of substance.
This is mostly a side effect of a condition I’d like to dub ‘workweek amnesia.’ Sometimes, in adulthood, it feels like the days blur together. Wake up, work, exercise (or, in my case, go to ankle rehab), eat, do (fill-in-the-blank) after-work activity, pass out. So when someone asks what I’m up to or how my week is going, I basically black out and can’t think of one single thing to tell them, even though hundreds of tiny things have transpired. I figure: Why would they want to know about the can of SpaghettiOs I polished off in 15 minutes (guilty pleasure) or the fact that I finally finished Jack Kerouac's On the Road?
But there are some things worth sharing. And maybe it’s time to reclaim the conversation. I’m done listening to water cooler chit-chat about used garden tractors (unfortunately, not a fictitious example). I have something to say, too, and it’s mildly interesting!
I pledge to share some of my small details and non-breaking news stories with others. I don’t want to contribute to the megaphone problem, but I do want to open up to the people who might actually appreciate hearing something about me. After all, these small, personal stories can spark bigger, deeper conversations, which I am always grateful for. As for the self-absorbed ramblers, I hope they take their embroidered sweatshirt chatter somewhere else.
Elena Douvanis is a marketing and social media professional living in the Lehigh Valley. She specializes in writing, eating good food, reading in an addictive fashion and putting together a rockin' party spread.