What do you say after you say “Hello”?

Suppose, as you show up at the office, someone asks you how you are.  What do you do?

A common-enough dilemma.  But consider this classic response (from “24”, Season VI):

Jack Bauer (calling in):  “This is Jack.”

Bill Buchanan (coolly, as usual):  “Jack.  We haven’t been able to reach you.  Are you all right?”

Jack: “Yeh, I’m fine.  But all the members of the back-up team have been killed.”

Think what a hit you’ll make at work, with a come-back like that!  A rueful grin, a “what can you say, it’s Monday” shrug, a nod that you’ll be soldiering on, even though every member of your back-up team has been killed.

("But enough about me.  How was your weekend?")

[Note to the uninitiated:  Being on Jack Bauer's back-up team  is a little like being the "#3 in al-Qaeda" or "the new Number Two" on "The Prisoner":  very high turnover.]

Note:  This post’s title is that of an excellent book by psychologist Eric Berne, which I much enjoyed in Berkeley, lo these many years ago.  He also wrote the classic Games People Play.  Out of sentiment and idle curiosity, I looked him up in Wikipedia… only to learn that he had been thrice divorced.

Qui custodiet  ipsos custodes?  Miserere nobis, domine.

~

Office etiquette:  More from “24”

Chloe (Season VI), to her hospital-bedridden husband, shortly after he has been brutally tortured by a team of sadistic terrorists:  She slaps him, then says:

   “Why don’t you stop feeling sorry for yourself, and get back to work!!”

[Note to the uninitiated:  Contrary to what a normal person would think, this incident is not intended by the network  to put Chloe in a bad light.  The viewer is supposed to shout, “Yeh, what’s with that guy?  What a pussy-wipe!”

This is, after all, the series that Dick Cheney  beats off to.]

~

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Synthesizing these two lessons, we must discounsel any member of the IC from attempting to bug out of husbandly duties  using that line:

Husband:  “Sorry, honey, I’ll be late to dinner.  All the members of my back-up team have been killed.”

Wife (slow burn;  slapping her palm with a rolling-pin):  “And just what sort of an excuse is that?”