There is very little work-related banter that I enjoy. That's not to say that I don't like talking with the people I work with – because I usually do – but I just despise the usual, cliched workplace topics of conversations (ie: My rant in an earlier post about people complaining that it's Monday).
And aside from that whole Monday thing, there are few things I hate more than somebody who greets you with a "Working hard or hardly working?" After which, they almost always chuckle to themselves with glee. Now, I admit that the phrase was probably funny the very first time somebody said it – Oohhh, I see what you did there, you flipped the words around! – but that was probably some time ago, in the 1950s.
I imagine that soon after that, the hilarity died considerably. And now, three-quarters of the way through 2009, the phrase is essentially Michael Jackson.
Dead.*
Anyways, the reason for all this is because, about 20 minutes ago while meandering through Wal-Mart across the street from the office (I was, during this time, "hardly working" for those of you keeping track), I overheard a guy talking on his cell phone.
And how he greeted the voice on the other end of the line was, essentially, a re-working of the "hardly working" question:
"Killin' time or is time killing you?"
Uhhh, what?
After I gathered my thoughts – my initial one being that this guy was the world's biggest idiot – I began to dissect this ridiculous phrase.
First off, it has absolutely no meaning. How does time kill you? How is that possible. After careful consideration, the only two ways in which I think that time could in fact be murderous in nature are 1) Dying of old age, and 2) People who are so busy they say that "There aren't enough hours in the day."
As for Way #1, it's pretty self-explanatory. You're old. You've been alive for a long time, and when that time is up, you die. Technically, it's time that kills you.
As for #2, well, these people are apparently so busy that they are being "killed" – figuratively speaking – by having a limited amount of time in which to complete a number of required tasks.
I get it, and I'm pretty sure that's what the intention of the "is time killing you?" line is all about. However, that does not make the sentence any less stupid, nor the speaker any less retarded.
It's no different that the original phrase – which is lame to begin with, as I said – and by trying to make a new version of said phrase, he just looks like a huge douche. You can usually get away with spouting lame cliches – Hell, athletes who are always taking it one game at a time and giving 110% do it every day – but who is this guy to try and coin a new phrase?
He's just some wahoo shopping at Wal-Mart in the middle of a work day and therefore likely unemployed**. And while it can be argued – pretty easily, I might add – that I, too, was in the exact same situation, there was one big difference: I wasn't coming up with asinine new twists on old phrases, thus making myself appear totally unhip and out of touch.
Nope, I was just killing time before it killed me.
*Yeah, I went there.
**A crass generalization, perhaps, but that's what why I'm considering changing this blog's title to Classic Times: Judging books by their cover since 1981.
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