Strange behaviors

[Anonymous]

SHHHH my salad is MY secret, and my secret alone!

[Anonymous]

JFC - next you will want to know how I take my coffee. Be gone, all of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree the issue is that OP and others in this circle are catty b's who like to ask seemingly innocuous questions of certain people and then twist it and gossip about it to trash them behind their back.

I worked in a place like this once and here's how you'd figure out what was going on and become *private* about seeming unimportant stuff:

Monday: You have a lighthearted conversation with a colleague about lunch, and tell them about how you're excited about the salad you brought that day because you've been on a big kick with trying out new combos and ingredients.

Tuesday-Wednesday: Colleague eagerly asks about your lunch each day and expresses an interest in your salads, seems enthusiastic.

Thursday: You walk into the kitchen at lunch and colleague is talking to someone else when you walk in but they both become silent when they see you and even though you don't know what they were talking about, you feel weird.

Friday: Someone you barely know stops you in the hallway to say they heard "all about" your salads and wanting to know what "crazy" combo you brought in that day.

Does any of this matter? No. Does it make you feel good? Also no. And that is how you learn to offer non-committal or vague responses to questions, because you don't feel like feeding a rumor mill so active and nasty that people sit around gossiping about what Kate in accounting packed for lunch on Thursday.

This is funny. I had something like this happen to me at work one time.

None of this makes any sense. People approaching you about your salad in the hallway? This sounds made up to deflect from the question at hand in the OP.

Why are some people so obtuse, and take such great joy in being so? If someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, it would not be an innocuous question, it would be a personal question, to most. A little common sense, people. PP sounds paranoid and asocial.

Yes, it's a made up story to illustrate why someone might be weirdly cagey about something inane like what they are having for lunch (which was one of the examples OP provided).

The issue is that people like OP read a lot into small talk and are looking for reasons to dislike or criticize people.

Have you ever seen the sitcom Difficult People with Billy Eichner? These are the kinds of people I'm talking about, and who I suspect OP is like. Catty, gossipy, obsessed about insignificant differences between people, looking for reasons to feel superior and judgmental of colleagues and other acquaintances. With people like this, the best response to a seemingly innocuous question like "what are you eating for lunch" is as vague and noncommittal as possible because they just want an excuse to criticize and judge.