leave me alone I'm working - Tuesday November 21 2000    

Now that I know what I'm doing with this UK project, I actually have a fairly large amount of work that I can see needs doing, so I don't have a lot of time for smalltalk or pointless distractions. Gone are the days when I'd take two hour lunches with Linda or go for impromptu strolls with Laurie in the park down by the 10 freeway.

I can tell Laurie misses my earlier cavalier attitude toward my workday, and despite my refusals she still asks me at least twice a day if I want to go for walks to talk about office gossip. Up until yesterday, I never had much of a beef with the politics of the company, but it used to be amusing to listen to Laurie complain about her degrading "scutwork" assignments.

Tomorrow is to be Laurie's last day and I could tell she was eager to converse with me, especially since word of the particulars of my evaluation meeting yesterday had leaked out via Linda and Julian and had ultimately reached her. But I had a lot of work and I had no desire to waste my time gnashing my teeth over that issue, so when Laurie came into my cubicle and brought it up, I quickly told her that I didn't want to talk about it.

So later she came into my cubicle again and said, in a conspiratorial whisper that clearly referred again to this subject, "I'm really sorry about..." That was it, I snapped. I raised my voice and said "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!" When you're dealing with the clueless sometimes you have to pound home the clues. I immediately felt bad for having done so; I mean, Laurie is nothing but nice to me and probably even has a crush on me. Nonetheless, I got what I wanted. She left me completely alone for the rest of the day.