In the past, you came to work on Monday morning, lit a cigarette, poured yourself a drink, asked your colleagues if they had fucked yet and had an animated conversation. Nowadays, with your vegan quinoa salad and sustainable water bottle, you have to be a lot more creative to find a suitable conversation topic – 99 out of 100 topics have become a minefield.
Because since #MeToo, the sex life of colleagues has of course been taboo, but you can also hurt, insult, offend, make people ‘feel unsafe’ or downright furious with what you feel are the most innocent subjects.
Take ‘the weather’ and ‘holiday plans’. Formerly the top 2 to chat about without any problems during lunch, nowadays a guarantee for heated discussions at the table about climate change, emissions and environmental impact.
Vacations have become a capitalist, decadent hobby anyway. Also hurtful to talk about, now that so many colleagues can no longer afford them. Even good old France, which used to be a safe haven near the coffee machine, now guarantees explosive arguments about retirement age, the harmful effects of alcohol, gluten (croissants) and animal suffering (foie gras).
Football is also better avoided. That is no longer considered such a sympathetic sport due to all the gay intolerance. Sport is a tricky topic of conversation anyway, because before you know it you’re on top of Jack van Gelder in the bath, Tom Egbers with his intern or Johan Derksen’s candle.
The subject of ‘children’ escalates in no time into shouting about gender-neutral upbringing, generational conflicts, and the ‘footprint’ of such a child. When you start talking about coffee, you quickly find yourself in the middle of the question of whether the beans have traveled to Europe in a circular manner and whether the coffee farmers have received a fair price for them.
Compliments about clothing or appearance have also become dangerous – because socially unsafe. In series, music and films there is always someone who has been discredited through #MeToo or other transgressive behavior. Politics then? Haha, just kidding.
I don’t even dare to ask about ‘the weekend’ anymore! Because then there is a great risk that there has been a barbecue (meat!), fishing (animal suffering!), that concert or museum visits have taken place (white privilege), that electric bicycles have been used (nuisance from boomers and cyclists), or that anything has been done in nature at all (nitrogen problem) that other colleagues may take offense to.
Nature should be avoided at all as a subject at the coffee machine or at the lunch table. Too sensitive to herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. So it is better not to talk about plants (did you know that pancake plants are real GroenLinks plants?!), cut flowers (pest for the climate), the zoo (animals in captivity), meadow birds (disappeared due to climate change) and certainly not subjects in which the link with ‘farmers’ can be made!
So don’t start about provinces where there are many farmers, about grasses (also not useful for all ‘allergic challengers’), fruit and vegetables or the TV program farmer seeks wifecertainly not now that presenter Yvon Jaspers will be crossing all of Europe next season (waste of fossil fuels).
Who is the mole? than? Euh no, because kerosene and if they don’t have flying shame there. All of Holland bakes? Also not smart to cut into because a lot of eggs are used (battery cages, vegan) and a lifestyle with a lot of empty calories is propagated – sorry Janny.
Joking then? I do not think so! You always offend someone. With humor you also run the risk that people will laugh out loud somewhere and other colleagues will feel excluded.
Gossip has of course been banned for much longer. About colleagues, because hurtful, but also about the boss, because there is ultimately just a person behind it – think of empathetic leadership.
Are there any topics left at all?!, I asked on Twitter. Twitter users did their best, with hundreds (!) of suggestions. But I had to reject them one by one.
Ballroom dancing? childhood trauma. Cats? bird killers. Kittens? Rather get an animal from the shelter. Dogs? Pathetic if you don’t have time to let them out and dog poop. The French chanson? Matthijs van Nieuwkerk. Van Kooten and De Bie? Boomer. Punctuation? Idem. The Wadden Islands? You have to go there with a polluting boat. The Royal family? A divisive mushroom.
Then what?! I actually thought socks were the best suggestion, one that was mentioned surprisingly often by Twitter users. Which socks do you like best, which socks do you wear in the summer, do you knit your own socks, socks through the ages, you can go in all directions with it.
A friend suggested “throwing out all the millennials so we can have fun at the office again” but then there will be no one left to pay our pensions.
After careful consideration, my conclusion is that there are actually only seven subjects that no one really can go wrong with, and those are: crossword puzzles, knitting patterns – with vegan wool of course, and office supplies (if you have to choose: do you prefer paperclips? or staples?)
You can also complain about meetings. Or about the Dutch Railways, but check in advance whether someone has a folding bicycle, because then of course avoid it, and of course: Sywert van Lienden – always good.
And… stool! It may sound a bit crazy, and it will feel a bit awkward to talk about at first, but we all deal with it, it’s different every day and most colleagues already talk shit anyway. I’d say give it a try!
Silence is also so offensive.