One consistent thing I notice in all these declarations, especially in speaking with other high-level management sorts… They’ll declare “we have better conversations in the office”, to which I simply ask “do you not ever simply call someone to shoot-the-shit?”

Case in point: we had a leaver recently, my boss had had a one-on-one and came to me saying “X is leaving, some flaky reason about job security”.

My response: “They’ve got a kid in a new school, and they’ve been a bit worried about operational security here. They just wanted to work for a bigger company because there’s inherently more stability in that sort of environment. Did X not tell you this?”

Boss: “No.”

Me: “…How long did you chat to them?”

Boss: “5 min call”

Me: “I pulled X in for a chat, we were talking for 30 mins… Do you not do this with everyone? Do you ever just take people aside for a social call?”

Boss: “…”

It’s just people from a different era, they didn’t grow up socializing on MSN etc. This is all foreign and scary to them. They’ll die (in the workplace) off soon enough.