Sometimes you’ll find yourself sitting at work and watching the clock. On those days, time has an incredible ability to seemingly move much slower, with seconds feeling like minutes and minutes feeling like hours. Whether you’re waiting on the moment you can clock out so that you can do the thing you’re looking forward to, or whether you’re simply not feeling your best that day, to say that those days can drag is a massive understatement.

On days like that, your colleagues can be a godsend. Particularly if you’re not feeling it today, having a good chat with a coworker can really help to re-motivate you – or at least to make you feel like there are some good things about your workplace.

However, if you’re really busy, or simply don’t feel like people-ing that day, incessant attempts to strike up conversation can feel grating, with the conversations around you seeming inane and increasingly irritating. That was what the employee in this story found when he could barely get through a day without countless customers offloading weirdly detailed stories onto him, without his permission.

Read on to find out how he felt about this.

People at work who just don’t stop talking

When I have a person who comes to my office to pick up a job, drop off or just get some information, they might notice that I’m the only one there most of the time.

They seem to then think that they are doing me a favour by starting a twenty to thirty minute conversation about themselves.

I get people who almost seem to use me as a free therapist, as they entertain me with personal stories about their weekends, or their children, or any new thing of the month.

Let’s see what this employee’s situation is.

I help transfer films and old home videos to DVD, and these same people will often give me a full back story of what’s on the tapes, like they think we can’t possibly do a simple transfer without knowing every detail of the tape.

Some of the worst ones I get are where people are telling me all about the places they filmed at.

I’ve only been in this country for over a year, I don’t know where or what these places are.

But of course I don’t say that. I’ve learnt that leads to them asking me where I’m from, which in turn leads to another half hour conversation.

Yikes. Read on to find out more.

It’s mostly old people who talk the most.

As in, it’s people who spouses have died and their grown up children never talk to them, so I next best available thing (but I could be wrong).

I told my sister about this, and she said it’s because I’m “easy to talk to.”

But I’m not sure if that is a compliment or consolation.

Some people might see this as a compliment, that folk want to talk to them.

Others might see it as themselves doing a positive thing in the world, being someone who listens and puts a smile on a person’s face.

However, some people are introverted and simply cannot deal with this amount of deep conversation from strangers – and that’s okay too.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a waitress who refused to return a tip after a party returned to the restaurant with a complaint.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person had a tactic for getting talkative folk to move on.

While others thought that this was a good way to politely decline to talk further.

Meanwhile, this Redditor had a not-so-subtle way of sending that message.

It’s great to connect with other humans – really, it is. But when you’re that person who for some reason has an ‘unload your life story onto me’ vibe, things can get a little more frustrating. Because as much as you might want to chat sometimes, you’re not always feeling it – and hearing about another person’s trauma and unrequited loves can be more than a little depressing if it hits you at the wrong time. So of course we try to listen, but maybe it’s important to have a sneaky way to put yourself first and, for once, get people to leave you alone.

Because this employee is not simply chilling. Rather, he’s at work, and thus has actual work to do – beyond chit chatting with elderly customers. As nice as that experience might be for them, it’s actually putting the employee behind on his workload, potentially making the rest of the day more stressful. It’s nice to be listened to, but it’s also nice to be asked if you want to listen, rather than being spoken at. And given the customers know nothing really about the employee it’s not a fair exchange. Hopefully by making himself look very busy, they’ll get the message.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a thrift store employee who refused to play “guess the price” without seeing the item in question.