Unfiltered

“Nicholi-a, makin’ copaays’”. Beaming with pride, she paused with her mouth open and her eyebrows raised, allowing me time to process the joke before continuing, “The Copimeister”.

Unable to smile or offer any other response, I just sat frozen in my chair. As embarrassed as I was for her, I was equally annoyed. Annoyed that she had put me in this awkward position in which I was now forced to address her comments. Social Darwinism would dictate that I leave this horrendous joke out in the cold to die where it belonged. However, the code of office behavior overruled in this situation and mandated that I humor her witless performance with some padded response or courtesy laugh. It was 9:00 AM on Monday morning and we were all seated in our manager’s office set to begin our weekly meeting. She thought she was lightening the mood, but in reality she was defouling it. She couldn’t just sit there and be quiet like the rest of us, or God forbid, ask about my weekend. No, she thought this was her time to play court jester and entertain us all with her hilarious rendition of a 20-year-old Saturday Night Live skit.

A strange thing about getting older is that people no longer put you in your place. When you are in high school and college, or even for a few years after that, your friends let you know the minute you step out of line. They will mock your dumb jokes or make fun of your clothes, or do countless other things to let you know you look or sound stupid. Though it may sound mean, this is actually an endearing act that also serves a tremendous purpose in society. It keeps you in check. It lets you know when you are being funny and when you aren’t. It lets you know when your fitted shirt looks ridiculous. It lets you know when to quit scouting that girl who isn’t interested. Without this filtering, you would have little sense of social perception. Without it, you have the situation I was currently faced with: a dorky 50-something year old woman telling jokes no one laughs at because no one has called her out on it for 30 years. In a twisted sense, one could argue that the system has let her down.

This system, for lack of a better term, refers to the charade of office decorum and corporate politics by which we all silently agree to abide. It is my belief that one’s entrance into the working world, and thus a person’s acceptance of the system, signals the end of the filtering process that keeps everyone relatively in line up to that point in life. Prior to a real job, most of us have very little experience acting politically correct. When you are in high school, the only adults you genuinely talk to are your parents, with whom you have a unique interaction all its own. Outside of your home, your exposure to teachers, coaches or friends’ parents consists primarily of one-off conversations for which you purposely straighten-up. Even in theses cases, you typically just sit attentively as you are spoken to and then respond accordingly. Very rarely would you consider any of these interactions a true conversation. Once they are over and you rejoin your friends, you revert back to your natural dialogue, cussing and speaking freely while your comments are either mocked or validated. Without you ever realizing it, this behavior becomes your modus operandi and it continues with little alteration as you progress through college.

This all changes when you enter the working world as it signals a shift in your social dynamic. For the first time in your life, the majority of your personal interaction will be with people not of your choosing. For most of us, this will also be the first time you are truly thought of as an adult and as such, you are required to act like one. You quickly realize that the “adult” persona you occasionally morphed into in the past is now the role you must perform each day for eight hours. From now on, the majority of your conversations are no longer natural or interesting, but is instead contrived and mindless. Whether you like it or not, you are going to hear about everyone’s weekend on Monday, the same way you will hear about their upcoming weekend plans on Friday. That douche bag who annoys the hell out of you? He is now your team leader and you have no choice but to listen to his story about getting a speeding ticket. The receptionist who makes a corny joke every single fucking day? You have no option but to fake a laugh each morning and begrudgingly encourage her to keep ‘em coming. Every fiber of your being wants to react differently. Not necessarily out of cruelty, but for the other person’s benefit as well. Deadpan their punchline, yawn during their story, or even jokingly tell them, “Not your best, pal”. Any response that would help restore things to a natural order and perhaps enlighten the other person as to how they are presenting themselves. Unfortunately, things simply don’t work that way. We all mind our manners and interact in a farcical working world where candor doesn’t exist. The by-product of this world is millions of people walking the halls of offices all over the country unaware that coworkers roll their eyes at their stories, avoids them at lunch or disdains their know-it-all behavior. For they have gone unchecked for so long that they forgot they were playing a game altogether and it was simply too tempting to believe that they were genuinely funny or that everyone loves their great one-liners.

As there is no real solution, it may be a waste of time to even think about it. Office behavior will carry on in this manner for as long people are living in social environments. There is no alternative to abiding by the rules and enduring the pain of our mutually agreed upon, yet forced interaction. That is where I find myself at this moment, watching this women act like a doofus as the other participants of the meeting offer her the standard courtesy smile and watch for my reaction, assuming I will follow suit. They know the same as I do, that this situation calls for a small acknowledgement so that the group can continue on with the intended purpose of the meeting. I oblige them all with a grin and a small nod and the clown accepts one more piece of validation that ensures her she is a funny person. The cycle continues. All I know for sure is that this shit wouldn’t have happened in high school.