Monday, September 29, 2008

If

I told you I'd prefer not to join you for lunch because I'm not hungry at all, and then proceed to get takeaway from the cafeteria, what do you think that means? If upon your return before lunch hour is over, you find that I had shut my usually open office door, how would you interpret that change? If I failed to acknowledge your presence in the clear floor-to-ceiling window pane next to my door, despite it obviously being in my field of vision; if I do not at all respond to your knocking, what, pray tell, would you take that to mean? If, after you decide to enter my office anyway, and to seat yourself without being invited to, and yet I continue to type away at my computer without looking up or giving so much as a grunt, WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT MEANS???

Those among you with at least weak grasp of thought and reason would realise that I do not - I repeat, DO NOT - want to be disturbed. But I must remind myself of the law of parsimony; that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible; that all else equal, the simplest solution is the best. I must cease to assume that intelligence exists amongst my colleagues. Until I accept and embrace this, I will have no peace.

Meanwhile, I'll just start being really bitchy about it.


...

No comments: