Farewell lunches. Great way to get a free meal from your soon-to-be ex-colleagues and spend official company time not doing work. Heh. Well, when I resigned from a company sometime back, the department threw me a farewell lunch at a nice restaurant. While we were sitting around and chatting, this socially inept colleague (whom everyone hated) suddenly stood up as if to make some grand announcement. I instinctively cringed, thinking “Please don’t make me give a farewell speech.” But what she did was even worse.

“Well, since I have everyone here, can I get some inputs on the training framework I sent out earlier this week?”

Yes. She wanted to gather feedback on a work issue at my freakin’ (I’m too polite to use another “f” word) farewell lunch. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? In what world is it acceptable to hijack someone’s social event?

After a moment of awkward silence, all ten of us unanimously decided to ignore her, and continued our interrupted conversations while she was left standing, looking around aimlessly for support. Was that too harsh of us? Perhaps. But honestly, with her low EQ, she probably didn’t even realise we were ignoring her.