People who ask you a question then, before you can reply, they give you a list of possible answers. e.g. "Where are you working at the moment? Soho? Hatton Garden? Are you even at work, ha ha, last time I asked you were having some time off? Soho isn't it? Is it? Or somewhere else? I remember working in Soho..It was an extraordinary place...(proceeds to tell lengthy, boring story of their, inevitably rather ordinary, time working in Soho), then proceed with the list of possible answers...Shoreditch? Old Street? Bit grim round there isn't it?
I usually let them carry on listing until they've exhausted every possibility they can dredge up, then give them an answer that they haven't listed. I do this in the hope that they'll realise that if they just asked the question and then, and here's the crucial bit, stopped talking and listened, they would have had their answer in a split second. A vain hope. Over talkers never ever realise.
But, of course, they're not really interested in the answer. They're not really interested in you at all.
People who do this don't do "listening." All they're really interested in, is making sure that it's their mouths flapping up and down and no one else's, because they are absolutely convinced that everything they have to say is much more important than anything anyone else has to say. Even if they were talking to Buzz Aldrin (Astronaut eh? Which Apollo was it 1? 2? 3? 11? no that was the one that crashed wasn't it, or was it the one where the air nearly ran out? 14? 6? 3? no I said that? 7? 8? 3?).
Why do they do this? Here's my theory.
To ensure that:-
a) They're the one's talking.
b) They're showing off some knowledge (for insecure people this is important).
c) If they do accidentally hit upon the correct answer and you manage to get a nod or a "yes" in, this counts as your contribution to the "conversation" and they now have carte blanche to keep banging on, bludgeoning you into silence with a wall of words. Usually this takes the form of seizing on the miniscule contribution you have just been allowed to make, to tell you something about themselves, maybe give you an irrelevant fact and belittle you and your answer. eg. "Hatton Garden? That's the jewelery centre of London you know, I used to work there and I remember it being a bit rough."
d) There are no gaps in the monologue to allow anyone else to have a turn at speaking.
2. Ainters.
People who say "ain't" as a way of emphasising that what they're talking about isn't going to occur. eg,
"Ah Johnson, I need your holiday form by Tuesday or your trip to Tenerife ain't gonna happen."
Do they think that adopting a cockney accent will make people take them more seriously? I don't know. I also don't know why this gets on my tits but it fucking does.
3. Too thick to helpers
People who lack the knowledge of the whereabouts of something (the Ladies'/a man wearing a really stupid hat that they'll really laugh at/the nearest pub...you know...that type of thing) but they need it. When they are then advised by a helpful person of the approximate location of this thing by saying "Over there" and pointing at it, they ignore the pointing arm and start looking around. They'd been looking around before and not seen it. Why do they now think that having heard the words "Over there" they will now have more success. Hilariously, they often say "Where?" and carry on moving their stupid fat heads around looking around randomly. I simply carry on pointing and say "There" until it dawns on them to look at where I'm bloody pointing.
4. Knowledge assumers.
People who assume that because they know something, you do too. This often happens when you start a new job. Some people have such a lack of empathy they are utterly incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of someone who has never set foot in the building before, has never worked there before and has no idea who anyone is. What happens is this. You need to speak to someone because, naturally, the way of completing the time sheets has not been explained to you (some knowledge assumer has assumed you completely understand the system, and that you somehow automatically know your log in name and password) and you need to speak to someone to find out how it works. You'd love to phone or email but you don't know who to speak to and besides, the phone is of such labarynthine complexity, there's no hope of using it. So you say to someone near you,
"I can't get my timesheets to work, who should I talk to about it?"
They reply " Try Jayde."
You reply, "Where does she sit?"
To which they reply "She sits next to HR, behind Vicki." She'll pronounce H as "Haitch" like a shithead would.
You want to hop up and down on the spot in sheer frustration and shout "I've new here you daft cow, how am I supposed to know who fucking Vicki or where fucking HR is.
"I'm sorry I only started today, I don't know who Jayde or Vicki is and I don't know where IT is."
It starts to dawn on them that you are neither psychic nor do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of what everyone on the planet looks like or where they sit. So they help.
"4th Floor, next to the kitchen, walk past meeting room 4 and IT is on your left, Vicki sits there. You'll see her straight away, she's just had her hair dyed. Jayde's next to her. "
You can find the 4th floor but you don't know where the kitchen is and unless Meeting room 4 has a big number 4 on the door you won't find that either, there is no sign saying IT dept and since everyone is open plan you don't know where one department ends and another begins, you still don't know what Vicki looks like nor what colour her hair was before she fucking had it dyed and what bloody colour it is now and What does "next to her" mean. In front? To one side? To the other side?
You embark on your odyssey but fail. Maybe you found meeting room 4, maybe you found the IT dept but crucially the Knowledge Assumer assumed you knew Jayde was a little Indian bloke and not a girl. Der. How come you didn't know that?
5. Shop exiters
People who walk out of shops without looking and are surprised that they bump into you Mr Pedestrian. If they are in a place that's big enough to provide enough custom to support a shop it's likely that there might be other people nearby. I mean, what is it about the act of shopping that makes people assume that they are suddenly the only person on the planet. I think I've answered my own question. Shopping for anything other than foodstuffs is an activity undertaken, in the main, by the brainless. Come to think of it, it is usually people coming out of clothes shops. This means they are going to be one or all of these things.
1) Young. Young people are always thicker than old people. It's a fact. They have less life experience and are completely solipsistic.
2) Fashion conscious. Anyone conscious of fashion is automatically empty headed.
iv) A girl. Girls are less aware or, as I like to term it, "noticey" of their surroundings. Their brains are occupied with being excited about their purchase, telling their vapid friends about their recent purchase on their, like, iphones, too busy thinking about themselves to realise that, despite their trip to the shop, there are other people on the planet besides them.
