Let me see if I can set the scene for you… I’m in a meeting room with about a dozen people. Half the people I know, half I don’t. I’ve been asked to give a presentation for a software application so I am sitting at the front with my laptop in front of me connected to the projector. The presentation is going well and we are about 20 minutes into the 45 minute presentation. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking explaining the software and the few people sitting next to me at the front of the room have been asking a lot of good questions. There has been a lot of pleasant banter back and forth. I am the king of the castle.
Then it happens…
The person sitting next to me reaches into their briefcase/bag and pulls out a tin of mints. They open it (this is occurring while I am speaking to everyone), then they slide the tin on the table in my direction.
Hello? At this moment I begin to suffer from a erratic Seinfeld thought process. I’m still speaking, but my multi-tasking mind has switched thought processes. What does this offering mean? Is it an act of “sharing kindness”? Or is it a “your breath is going to kill us” offering? I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. Many times my wife has made a similar offering to me, but I know for sure that she is not doing it because she wants to share — she does it because the expulsion of odor with my every exhale is too extreme for her. So is that what was meant by this inconspicuous table slide of mints?
Arghh!! What does it all mean? Needless to say, as soon as I had a time to stop speaking for a second I reached, took a couple of mints, and put them in my mouth. Then with the hope that it was a “share” offering, I participated in the pyramid scheme of offering mints and slid the tin across the table to the person next to me.
Wait a minute… I wonder what that person thought of my offering?
Pistol
