The Last Word

Why do some people need to have the last word in every conversation? Most of you know that I work at home and that my office is actually in Minnesota. Many of my conversations happen over the company's instant message system. If you don’t use instant messaging, this is basically where you hear “ding”, and a little box pops up with someone’s usually trivial and meaningless interruption. You then type something back in the box, and so it goes, turning what should be a 60-second phone conversation into a long series of drivel and keyboard smiley faces ;).

Instant messaging was intended to be used for very quick conversations, but instead, I work with people who are just too lazy to pick up the phone to have a real conversation. It’s okay, because I don’t really want to talk to most of them anyway.

One of the people I work with insists on having the last word in every instant message conversation. It goes something like this – “Ding! (her) How much time would it take for you to rewrite the Bible in Portuguese?” “Dong! (me) About three days.” “Ding! Okay. Thanks.” “Dong! Send me the documented work request.” “Ding! Okay, will do!” “Ding! Thanks again.” “Ding! Have a nice day! (smiley face).” "Ding! See you later!"

“Dong! Shut the hell up and go away already.”