andamu

Dear Miss Manners,

The office space in the lab is laid out like city blocks, narrow streets across which the cubes face one another, and broad avenues crossing them for through traffic.

These eight or twelve feet wide corridors are well lit and unobstructed, allowing you to see all the way down to their ends. They seldom give rise to that classic issue: the doorway or aisle tango. You know, where both polite people step aside in the same direction, then try to solve the issue by simultaneously stepping to the other direction, continuing back and forth for a while until someone finally stands still.

No, these problems are much more awkward. Let's say you are halfway down the corridor when your manager's manager rounds the corner and enters the corridor. You are too far away to greet them. You have nodded your head and the smile that was natural a moment ago now feels plastered artificially on your face.

Do you make eye contact? For the entire walk? That would turn it into a scene from a B-grade movie, one that you're not quite sure whether it is soppily romantic, or melodramatically violent. But turning your eyes away is not really an option either, because you are surrounded by the outer walls of cubicles, nothing there that could ostensibly hold your interest. Just this excuciatingly awkward dilemma; no wonder people fix their gazes on the lights indicating the progress of the elevator like deer caught in the headlights.

Dilemma number two concerns someone with whom you have occasional interactions, and have become friendly nodding acquaintances, exchanging trivialities if you both happen to waiting in a queue.

Walking down the broad corridor, faintly aware that there are other people walking a few steps behind you, this nodding acquaintance is approaching from the opposite end. The persons lifts their hand, waves, and says "Hi!"

a) You lift your hand and wave, only to see their eyes refocussing on you with surprise, as you hear a voice behind you pipe up, "Hi."

b) First you look around to see who is behind you and how they are responding to the greeting before waving back in the classic "Are you talking to me?"

c)You don't do anything, and it turns out they were greeting you and now they feel snubbed and a whole lot of effort will have to go into smoothing out the relationship.