On Tuesday last week, I went to the employee breakroom with the intention of retrieving my lunch -- two slices of pizza -- from the employee refrigerator, heating it for 90 seconds in the employee microwave, and carrying it back to my desk for consumption. Everyone at my company eats lunch this way -- alone, at our desks. I don't know why. I guess we don't like each other very much.

When I entered the breakroom, I noticed the Old Lady sitting alone at a table, finishing her Burger King lunch. The Old Lady is really not that old -- about sixty or so -- and she has worked in Fabrication at my company for nearly forty years. I am going to make fun of her in this post. If you are one of those people who think that we should treasure older people for their knowledge and wisdom gleaned from their vast experience, then let me hasten to assure you that the Old Lady has not gleaned a goddam thing in six decades on this planet. Her only conspicious talent is her ability to trap people in pointless, boring, unsolicited conversation, usually about her son in Maine, who I suspect left home at the age of sixteen and never gave his mother his new phone number.

I hadn't expected to see the Old Lady when I entered the breakroom, so I accidentally made eye contact. This was a mistake. The Old Lady feeds on eye contact like a vulture feeds on carrion. I recovered as best I could and implemented the Alpha Phase of my defense by flicking my eyes to the floor and walking straight to the refrigerator.

"Well, how are you today?" she said. Blast! She had penetrated my Alpha Defense easily.

"I'm fine. How are you?" Two more mistakes, neither of them excusable by surprise. My first mistake had been answering the question. The second had been asking her a question -- purely a mental error, a rookie's mistake. Correct responses could have included: feigning deafness, plunging a butter knife into my eye, or lighting myself on fire.

"Well, I'm doing pretty good," she replied, delighted to have found an eager young conversation partner. Panicking, I launched the Beta Phase of my defense and only grunted in response while I pretended to root around in the depths of the refrigerator, hoping she would leave the lunchroom quickly.

"That's pretty good," she said, sidestepping Beta Phase like a veteran running back faking a young linebacker out of his shoes. I grunted again and continued to root around in the back of the refrigerator, gamely sticking with my shattered defensive scheme.

"Doncha think?" she asked, louder this time. I was simultaneously impressed and horrified with the witlessness of this conversation. She had told me she was doing pretty good, had observed that it was pretty good that she was doing pretty good, and was now demanding confirmation from me. I knew there was no way I could successfully heat my lunch for 90 seconds. By the time I got the microwave set, she would have launched into a story about how she sent a shirt just like the one I was wearing to her son in Maine last Christmas. I had no choice but to deploy the Gamma Phase of my defense: ABORT.

I smiled tightly, grabbed a yogurt, and scurried from the lunch room, beaten.

+posted by Lawrence @ 11/17/2003 10:27:00 PM