Date:
5 minutes ago
Address:
By the bowl of stale salt and vinegar chips
Friday Night Drinks
Awkward office party
Ugly office Building.
Dear Drinks-goer,
Please accept this immediate notice of my resignation from this conversation.
I’ve decided that at this point in time — specifically, right after you asked if I “had much on for the weekend” — that it would be best for me to move on and pursue other conversation opportunities.
This is not to say I haven’t gotten anything out of this conversation. In fact, I’ve gained a lot in my time here. Without this conversation, for instance, there is no way I would have known that you’re feeling a bit tired, or that you won’t have any chocolate cake because your indigestion is playing up. Nor would I have known about your halitosis, and how that situation has deteriorated.
I also feel that I have used up the number of instances in this conversation that I can pull out my phone and consult a weather app, meaning that my prolonged presence in this conversation is no longer viable.
I came to this decision after realizing that I had heard your lawnmower story not once, but twice before. While grateful for the opportunity to hear this story, I feel that is no longer the right story for me to hear at this time, and that I should move on to other stories. As such, my position in your company is untenable.
If upon leaving I would able to provide some feedback about this conversation, I would suggest:
1. Invest in more high-yield topics: eschew the small talk that you used up at 9:30 am when I entered the office. Next time you feel yourself beginning to talk about how long it takes you to get to work, just stop, and ask your interlocutor “are you afraid of death?”
2. Take advantage of potential mergers and acquisitions: incorporating Sarah from marketing, positioned just to your left, could have added significant value to this conversation, if only by diluting your participation.
3. Placing your hand on my arm and leaving it there is not one of the necessary conventions of conversation.
Please accept, as a signal of my departure, this excuse about needing to quickly discuss a few work things with Ed from the market impacts team. I apologize if that, upon further scrutiny, you realize that there is no one at our work named Ed and that we do not have a market impacts team. But this was merely the best I could do under the circumstances.
For a smooth transition, I plan to hand over my remaining duties to the person who only came over to ask where the bathroom is.
I wish you success in your next conversation.