If your job involves working with others on a regular basis, chances are you get dragged into annoying conversations that you don’t want to be a part of. If not, then perhaps you’re one of the people who drag others into them. Why the Thriller zombie photo? That will make more sense further down.

You know how it works – out of the blue, a co-worker strikes up a conversation about something rather meaningless that you really don’t care to talk about. As much as you want to just walk away or tell them to shut up, you feel obligated to be polite and chat or at least listen. After all, you have to see and work with this person daily and don’t want to cause any hard feelings.

Most workplaces have repeat offenders. We’ve got a few at my office. One of them is so predictable, I often know what he’s going to talk my ear off about before it happens. I also know I’ll have to fake being at least mildly interested in order to keep the peace. The guy I’m speaking of can be an enjoyable person to talk to sometimes, but it’s hit or miss.

With the news of Michael Jackson’s death last Thursday, I knew what was going to be the topic of interest the following day at work and who was going to bring it up first. Friday morning, I entered the office and headed for my desk. Before I could even sit down in my chair, guess who ran over and enthusiastically said, “Hey – have you heard the news…”

“No, I live under a rock on the far side of the moon where radio transmissions can’t reach.”, I replied. Actually, I didn’t really say that, but I sure wanted to. HELLO MCFLY! Anybody in there? He knows full well that I don’t care for celebrity chat because I tell him so every time he engages me in that topic, but it doesn’t matter. Every time one of them dies, gets arrested, or stars in a film he’s interested in, I get to hear about it like it’s some some kind of late breaking, important news flash… and then listen to him repeat the same thing to other employees nearby, one by one.

In all fairness, sometimes I’m the annoying conversation starter. We probably all do that to others from time to time. At least I don’t do it often and repeatedly bother people with trivial things they don’t care to discuss.

My example isn’t of the most annoying conversation I’ve been dragged into but it is extra annoying when you see it coming from a repeat offender. Had someone else (a non offender) brought up the same topic, I may not have been as annoyed. I enjoy occasional meaningless “water cooler” chat, but I do prefer it to be with someone who understands that I have a TV, radio, phone, the internet, etc. and news DOES in fact come my way and I don’t need to be informed about every celebrity death, as if all life hinges on the knowledge, before I can even sit in my chair at the start of the work day.

Do you encounter this at your place of work? Do you ever tell the person to just shut up, or fake being mildly interested until there is opportunity to escape the conversation without appearing too rude about it?

I stepped out to buy some flowers for my wife while on break at work today. She’s an amazing woman and I like to bring her flowers from time to time for no other reason other than I love her and to make her smile. Walking back into the office with flowers in my hand always gets the same old, over-used, just-not-funny-anymore joke. Everyone I passed by said pretty much the same thing: “For me? Really, you shouldn’t have!” Seriously, every single co-worker I passed said that same phrase almost word for word. I get this every time I step in the office with flowers in my hand. I always do my polite, fake chuckle back, sometimes playing along. You kind of have to do that. It’s expected, even though the joke, that same old joke, is never funny.

Do you get this in your office? It’s not limited to my walking in with flowers either, there are a lot of repeated, over used, just not funny jokes that fly around. I’ll probably write about others in the future. If any of them were funny the first time I ever heard them… they’re sure not funny now after hearing it a hundred times. But people keep hammering on them over and over. They think they’re being witty and funny, but they’re not witty or funny. Not when it’s the same jokes every time. For a joke to be witty or funny, it has to be somewhat unexpected. These jokes are about as unexpected as the sun setting in the evening.

Don’t get me wrong – I both like and get along really well with my co-workers. I just don’t see the reason for the same stupid jokes each and every time [whatever] repeating situation arises. It’s like when someone burps and someone else replies with a “bless you” or “gazoontite” expecting a laugh because of it. Maybe they keep doing it because everyone keeps offering their fake polite laughs. Maybe it’s just a part of office culture everywhere. I’d be lying if I said I don’t do this myself sometimes, but in all honestly, at least I try to go for the lesser used gags rather than the obvious, already been-beat-to-death ones. Sometimes, I even come up with something genuinely funny and new… and then one of my co-workers will repeat it to everyone else in the office and end up getting wit-credit for MY joke. Grrr. That’s another annoying office trend, and a rant for another day.