It’s just office small talk.
Everyone knows I have a very long commute to work each day, and I always get asked about it.
“So, are you still commuting from Ottawa?”
“How was the drive today?”
“I can’t believe you drive every day!”
It goes on, and on, and on every day. These people mean well, and are just striking up a conversation. Your colleague is doing the same. No big whoop.
She hasn’t, but I’ve known others who have, and she seems like the type.
I’m not worried about anything serious. My greatest fear is that I will get into an undignified fight with her over petty nonsense. E.g. “you never do anything during the weekend” - mind your business - “you’re mad because you don’t have any plans” - etc…
It’s unprofessional and there is no way to come out of something like that looking good.
I wish. She never has plans either. I think she just wants to go through the motions of a conversation, but doesn’t realize/care that she’s invading my privacy.
I can’t lie to the coworkers who I actually like. And if I just lie to her and not everyone else, then it’ll look like I’m afraid of her opinion. My strategy right now is plausible deniability. I don’t talk about my weekend, and people can’t really tell if I have no plans, or if I have plans, but don’t really want to talk about them.
Well, I care about what some people do on their weekend. They are usually the ones that don’t insult me when I don’t want to talk about my weekends.
I wish I had the balls to say that. Instead:
Do you have plans for the weekend?
Sleeping late Saturday!
How was your weekend?
It was restful.
Well, what *do *you do on the weekends? You don’t just stare at the wall, right? Right? Come on, tell us.
You’re worried about looking good to someone who insults you?
Can you cultivate “frosty” if you’re worried about being undignified?
Or you could pretend to be so engrossed in your work that you didn’t even hear her come in. This only works if you can restrain yourself from looking up when you hear your name. I’ve done this one when I’m in the break room at work and someone wants to make chit chat and I don’t. They start talking to me from somewhere in my peripheral vision, and I just continue eating. If they continue, I just look up from my food, and say, “Oh, were you talking to me?” in a not very inviting tone. Then I go back to eating my lunch.
I did this today. It works!
And I wouldn’t even say, “mind your business”. What would happen if you just stared at her for a few seconds when she said, “You never do anything during the weekend”?
Well, my plans involve various deviant sex practices. Care to learn more?
“Frosty” won’t work for me. The goal isn’t to completely avoid her. My work life will be easier if I can rely her for favors. I want to stay friendly with her, but I don’t want her prying into my personal life.
I’ve stared her down before. She once asked me if I “liked” another coworker who I was friends with. I told her she was being inappropriate. She agreed and apologized.
This time the behavior seems less egregious. I don’t know if it warrants a stare down.
I still like my idea of a humorous non reply.
“Same as every weekend: I’m putting on my rubber suit and going out to fight crime.”
Yep, “I do unspeakable things to myself with a hand mixer until the wee hours of the morning then sleep the sleep of the just surrounded by my anatomically correct sock puppets.” should do the trick.
I get asked by many, many people what I did / will do over the weekend.
Generally it’s friendly, pointless smalltalk: a simple question anyone can ask of anyone. Sometimes it’s a person who’s excited about their plans for the weekend and is hoping you’ll say “…how about you?”.
I don’t mean to threadshit but I just don’t see this as a big problem. She hasn’t been rude (yet).
I’d probably just give a “meh”-like answer, while thinking about other things (or if I’m at my desk give a stock answer while continuing to work).
ETA: Oh, and in terms of theories, if she often says she has no plans, perhaps she wants to meet up outside of work? You know, she wants to make friends, but is unusually bad at it.
Print up a calendar with “Lakai’s Weekend Plans” as the header. Then mark every weekend “Do nothing”. Hand it to her and say “Since we seem to do this every week, I thought you might find this handy. It also covers Monday morning’s conversation as well. I’ll let you know if something changes, so we can skip it from now on.”
Can you get away with, “Oh, same thing I always do. You?” Contains no real information, sounds friendly, and deflects the question back on her.
Do you want to stay friendly or do you want to keep it strictly professional? It might be easier to rely on her for professional favors if you only talk to her about work-related matters. “Friendly” in the workplace is overrated. “Friendly” creates needless drama.
“I had an arms deal in Tangiers. Or a cake in the oven. I don’t remember which.”
When someone asks a personal question, ask that person, “Why do you need to know?”
I still don’t personally see it.
“Get up to much over the weekend?” for me is at the level of “How are you?” or “Great weather we’re having right now”. It doesn’t really cross the personal professional line because it’s just smalltalk.
Saying “you never have any plans on the weekends” may or may not cross the line, depending on specifics.
It may just be said because the person can’t think of any other comment. Just continuing the smalltalk a little longer.
If they went on to say, “Don’t you have a partner? Or friends?” then clearly that would cross the line, and at that point you should get mad, but there’s been no mention of anything like that.
“No offense. But I like to keep my work life and my personal life separated.”