Superficial Pleasantries

.. and we are at Tuesday today - Monday's ugly cousin. The comedic Chaplin reminding me "Hey .. You there... you're stuck right in the workweek."

You stumble into office like you crawled out of bed, wrestled a blanket , and lost. Your coffee from the cafe tastes watery - society's poor substitute for real joy. You feel like your name must change to Maximus. A roman gladiator who has just wrestled all night in battle. You scream into the room, "I AM Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the TRUE KING.......... ah servant ..", silently. I feel, there's always a subjugation, somewhere, everywhere in life. No?

Just as you're settling in, trying to remind yourself about the truth of how you signed up for the daily grind, you see a figure approaching. Ah, yes, here comes the peculiar specimen- the office polly, if you will. Let's call him Robin - all sunshine and roses at 7 a.m. who are these people, really? Were they raised on a diet of glucose biscuits and boundless optimism?

Robin's got that over-enthusiastic bounce in his step, like he's been B-boying on caffeine. Before you can even hide behind your screen, Lord Robin strikes.

"How are you doing?" he asks, with the kind of smile reserved for toothpaste ads and people who have never known real pain. Now, I'm not talking about the minority of genuine questions that give you a glimmer of hope and maybe a small ear to calm your mental traffic. No. This is about those empty sentences. Fillers or Introductory shell salutations that are simply office death traps.

You see in this corporate world, a genuine "how are you?" is rare. I hate it. My gut hates it. It's of my opinion- No one asks this question unless they've already noticed that you look like a rejected extra from a war movie.. the bags under your eyes and the subtle tremble of your hand as you try to sip that watery excuse for coffee. Yep. They know you're on the edge of a meltdown, and they're poking you with that question just to see if you'll crack.

But of course, this is the office, where everyone is the master of pretense. So, you force a smile, a good corporate accepting smile- more like a grimace, but passable-and say,"Oh, I'm good! Just a bit busy, as usual you know".

Busy? Ha! You're not busy, my friend - you've enough work that can seem to drown you in deadlines, each more unreasonable in expiry than the last. We call it busy, in the corporate world. It sounds more respectable than "I'm on the verge of losing plain sanity".

The truth is: Steve doesn't care about your answer. He's not there to rescue you from your spreadsheet-induced, powerpoint heavy misery. No, no. It's a method of checking if you're still capable of producing the required output for today. Like a doctor tapping your knee with a hammer - If you jerk in response, he knows you're still alive.

As the day drags on, More emails, more requests, more questions, more "how are you doing?" Each time someone asks, it chips away at your fragile sanity. By 3:30pm, you've downgraded your response to something like, "Oh, hanging in there, just about" which is office code for "I'm moments away from Tom cruise-ing on my office chair", like that Oprah winfrey episode. By the end of the day, you're mentally composing a list of rejected mental to-do's for tomorrow.

But no, you won't quit, you stay. Because quitting would mean defeat., and in the corporate world, we never surrender. We endure. Like the fit zombies in "The Walking dead", we keep going, battered but mentally unbroken. We keep going, pushing buttons and attending meetings, speaking a word of encouragement to yourself "I've got it all together".

So next time, when a Steve-or whoever the office sunshine dispenser is-asks you how you're doing, just lean in and say "Steve, I'm one bad powerpoint away from moving into a cabin in the desert".

They'll either leave you alone or if you have one of those teams that cheer you up, you may get fed with sandwiches and karak. Smile, nod, and keep them all at bay with words like "Surviving the day", while you summon the will to redo the mantra 'Rinse. Repeat" - for tomorrow and the day after, until the weekend comes.

I also take a social conscious decision not to be a Robin to everyone around. The world could use some genuine.

Stay put. Hang in there. The weekend isn't some fever dream. You will survive.