Chicago, IL-The office is by all accounts a minefield of mundanity, the prospect of triggering each godforsaken interaction somehow more dull and uninteresting than sitting at your desk and heaving another piece of digital waste into the collective corporate trash vortex. In fact, the fear of being emotionally maimed by another conversation involving elevator speed or low hanging fruit has caused most employees to spend the majority of their days methodically plotting to avoid any and all human interaction.

Though gazing unresponsively into your computer screen and looking vaguely constipated can be an effective method of maintaining solitude, certain bodily and professional necessities can force employees to wade into the treacherous sea of lukewarm tap water and eager mouths of forthcoming coworkers. Bathroom and water fountain trips are executed with the precision and discretion of Sean Connery escaping from Alcatraz.

Meetings are tentatively accepted, dreaded, rejected and re-scheduled until they are ultimately forgotten and mercifully disappear into an Outlook graveyard of irrelevance. Phone calls are gladly exchanged for a string of 200 frustrated emails which create a lifetime of resentment and bring neither party closer to any resolution. Though the outcome still is somehow more attractive than the thing that is dreaded most by any employee “Jumping on a call for a quick chat.”

No matter how exhausting the avoidance is, the alternative is exponentially worse.