The Antisocial Work Life: How to survive the corporate world as an introvert.

Welcome to The Antisocial Work Life! This is your guide on how to get by in the corporate office environment while avoiding social activities and most people altogether! Use these handy tips to maintain your introvert lifestyle while being surrounded by hundreds (thousands?) of people you don’t feel like talking to.

Use the wrong elevator bank.

If your building has multiple elevator banks going to different groups of floors, why not take the wrong one to potentially avoid people you work with? It helps if you’re able to take the elevator whose first stop is a floor within a couple floors of yours, that way you get off first and can get some exercise by taking the stairs to the proper floor!

If your building doesn’t have multiple elevator banks, why not get off a couple floors early anyway? Use the exercise as an excuse if you run into anyone.

“Oh sorry, I already grabbed one!”

If you’re feeling particularly antisocial that day, be sure to grab a coffee from the kitchen right when you get in (if your company offers that – otherwise buy one on the way in or go get one as soon as you can). That way, when people ask if you want to go for coffee you can just tell them you already have one! However, this doesn’t always work; sometimes people just want you to walk with them and I’m sorry but I don’t have a suggested way to get out of that.

Wear headphones at your desk.

Not every office lets you do this, but in an attempt to make it obvious you are working and don’t want to talk to anyone, wear headphones! I’m talking your typical over-ear, millennial, “I DJ on Saturday nights at this small club downtown” headphones. You don’t even need to be listening to anything.

Take lunch strangely early or oddly late.

Similar to the coffee excuse, it’s easy to avoid eating lunch with people if you can take your break at a weird time. Eating early lets you use the “I ate already” excuse, and eating later in the day lets you work through the lunch hour when fewer people are around. I don’t know about you, but I get way more work done when there’s no one to bother me. In the last few months of my employment I’ve actually taken to having two small lunches and eating one of them early in the day and the other late. Boom, best of both worlds.

Eat at your desk to avoid the lunch crowds.

Most people like to get away during the lunch hour, even if just for a walk or some fresh air. In my experience, this is the absolute worst time to do this. At your typical lunch hour there are people everywhere. And they are all doddlers.

Seriously, the worst kind of people. Eating at your desk lets you avoid the doddlers while doing literally anything else. You can read in peace (usually), watch videos on your phone, or continue to work if that’s what you’re into.

Take advantage of the Status function on Skype, Lync, and other messengers.

Many offices use an Instant Messaging system – like Skype or Lync – for quick & easy communication between colleagues. It’s also a great way to touch base with your work friends to chat about your weekend and all the excitement going on with your job. Too bad I hate chatting.

Luckily most of these IM applications let you set your display status to things like Busy, Do Not Disturb, or my favourite… Away.

Typically when people see that I am Away from my desk they don’t message me. Perfect. They also usually don’t expect me to be doing nothing but refreshing my email every 5 seconds and call me the moment they send me something asking “did you see my email?”. Even better.

Of course, if you are a social person, just do the exact opposite of everything I mentioned.

Later gators!