i've lain through animal days

Ready?  Humans are packbondy creatures.  I mean, there’s just no arguing it.  They packbond readily, and quickly, and unbelievably strongly.  Once a human has packbonded with a thing, they will do anything to help and protect that thing.  

There’s a downside to that, not often mentioned.  It uses up a lot of their time and energy to build those packbonds, maintain those packbonds, and most especially to do the work of helping and protecting those with whom they have packbonded.  It doesn’t leave them a lot of time and energy for helping other beings.  If you want a human to help you – if you want to reliably get their best effort – you have to packbond with them first. “Yeah? So?” So you’re probably going to be working with humans for most, if not all, of your career.  No matter how good or bad you are at your job, there will come a time when you need someone else in your workspace to help you with something, whether that’s manning the fry station for 2 minutes while you pee, sending over those numbers from marketing, or dropping everything to teach you how to do a thing that your boss told you to do or else you’d be fired.   Not to mention the big things.  They don’t give promotions to just their friends – at least not so much any more. Promotions go to the people who’ve completed big, visible, important projects.  It seems fair until you consider,,,, who gets the big, important, visible projects assigned to them in the first place?   Humans give boosts to the people they’ve packbonded with.  They mention packbondee’s accomplishments to the boss (or the boss’ boss).  They cover for the mistakes of people they’ve packbonded with.  

“That’s not right! It shouldn’t be a popularity contest! It should be about who does the best –”  Listen to me.  Listen.

You may be right.  You may be the most correct creature to have ever spoken since the beginning of galactic civilization.  It does not matter Humans packbond. It’s what they do. I can’t stop it. You can’t stop it.  No power in the ‘verse can stop it. This is how the human do. All you can do is work with it.  If you want a human to help you – if you want to reliably get their best effort – you have to packbond with them first. “Look, I’m introverted and scared of people and I have social anxiety so I really don’t know how to –” Hey, my pal, I feel you.  I, too, am introverted. And I have social anxiety. And I have PTSD that actually – and I recognize that this is bizarre – has ‘business networking’ as a trigger.   For you, I have good news: Humans will packbond with anything.   Like, you don’t really actually have to do anything. You kinda just have to… exist. In their presence. They kinda do the rest.   If you can talk with them, that speeds things up.  But it doesn’t have to be, like, good conversation. Like, it can totally go You: boy, sure is hot out! Human: Man oh man, can you believe it? You: Wow, yeah Human: Totally You: …. Human: ….

This conversation – as awkward and uncomfortable as it felt to you, has caused this human to packbond with you a little more. If you repeat it weekly, you will get good results. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

You need to packbond with the humans you come in contact with

Taking time to do that is not only justifiable, it is an important part of your job, and should be treated as such

That is to say that, as much as you hate it (and believe me, I understand), you have to take time away from actual work and dedicate it to packbonding with your fellow workers

Tips

Plan out your packbonding time. It’s easier if you can initiate than if a human springs packbonding-time on you all unexpected.  In an office job I like to use Friday afternoon, but adjust according to what makes sense to you and your situation.

Keep some packbonding-time questions handy.  My go-to list is:

(If it’s Monday or Tuesday) How was your weekend?

(If it’s Wednesday) How’s your week been so far?

(If it’s Thursday or Friday) Any big plans for the weekend?

How’s your day been?

You don’t have to care about the answers to these questions. All you have to do is remember that if the human is answering questions, they are not asking you any questions.  Therefore questions are your friend.  If you ask follow-up questions, you may be able to get through the entire packbonding time without having to do any of the talking

Learn to disengage from packbonding.  You can use basically the same sentence (or variants on it), but you’ll want to practice it so that you can make it sound natural.  I use “Awesome! Well, I gotta get going. Have a good one!”

They often become 50% less annoying/frustrating/stressful. 

I am saying this as an ASD extreme introvert with specifically explicitly peer social based PTSD. (When people are mad at me on the internet my amygdala thinks that we are going to DIE HORRIBLY FROM A TIGER.) 

But once you have exchanged these basic signals of pack-bonding, the terror of these other humans reduces somewhat, AND their foibles become somewhat less stressful! All because now your brain is giving you slightly more positive chemicals, because Humans Packbond to Any Fucking Thing. 

The ways we actually can’t duck biology are far weirder and more esoteric than the bigots who try to use determinism as an argument even begin to grasp, but the thing we can do is take those weird and esoteric biological imperatives and harness them and account for them and use them to actually make us better functioning people while not actually fucking us over. If we do it carefully, with deliberation! 

Ignis Stupeo Scientia.

- I can’t do it

- now

-I literally cannot recall the words that just came out of my mouth