How Are You...?

You know something that's been really irritating lately? People asking me how I am, particularly people at work. It is so bloody obvious that they don't actually want to know how you really are, (just watch their eyes glaze over if you say anything other than 'fine, thanks'), that I just don't know why they bother. I mean,it wouldn't be so bad if they put a bit more effort into enquiring after your health, it might just qualify as a social interaction. But no, it's all so perfunctory - the bastards just say 'how are you', as if on auto pilot before turning on their heel and walking off. Just lately, they haven't even had the courtesy to separate those two actions,instead asking the question as they turn, so that if you do try to reply, you find yourself addressing their retreating back. I ask you, if you are so contemptuous as to my well-being, they why bother asking at all? Just walk on by in silence.

Indeed, I never bother asking people how they are. I really don't care. No, really, I don't. Well, perhaps not caring is a bit extreme - the truth is that I'm utterly indifferent to the lives of most of the rest of the human race. Over the years I've realised that their opinions mean nothing to me, that the details of their lives really don't interest me and that I'm not interested in any form of social interaction with them. Just lately my misanthropy has been getting worse - I barely bother speaking to people at work at all these days. We have nothing in common and nobody bloody listens anyway - that's why they keep making the same sodding mistakes, over and over, with monotonous regularity. Luckily, I spend most of my time out of the office, working on my own. Getting back to the original point - can't we just dispense with all these so-called pleasantries we're supposed to go through on a daily basis? They've become nothing more than empty rituals - everyone is too self-absorbed these days to really care about anybody else, so why bother?