Adrian Chiles on football chat. In response to the rather silly request (?) by Anne Francke that bosses should censor (moderate) sports chat in the workplace.
On that point, let me state clearly that the woman is wrong – one hundred percent wrong. People should be free to chat about whatever they wish without the thought police stepping in.
However…
I feel sorry for people who aren’t into sport. Where do they go for their extreme, explosive joy, to scream and hug strangers? I think they miss out there, but also in the sense that Francke is getting at.
My interest in sport is sub zero and I have no need for Chiles or anyone else to feel sorry for me. I have managed perfectly well for six decades. I very much doubt that I could engage him on the joys of motorcycling. Each to his own, I guess. Anyone trying to engage me on football or cricket is wasting their time. I have no knowledge of the subject and even less desire to be educated on it. All that I can say is that both made my schooldays an abject misery and I left school swearing never to have either pollute my life again. I promise that I’ve kept.
I can’t think of a single other subject area so useful for starting a conversation and establishing a bit of mutual ground.
I can think of plenty, but then, I have an imagination and an ability to engage without talking about kicking a ball about. I am equally comfortable with silence. But maybe that’s just me. I’ve managed thus far.
This all makes sport, and football particularly, an incredibly valuable thing, in and out of the workplace.
Not really. If you are into it, fine, but many of us manage without and don’t find it remotely desirable, let alone valuable.
But I do get that if you’re outside this giant clique it must all be very annoying, as well as exquisitely boring. A bit like football, actually, from time to time.
Until the issue is raised, such as now, I don’t give it any thought. It really is that uninteresting.
I get taking part in sports to stay fit. I’m a type 2 diabetic and it is important that I take regular exercise, distance running and triathlons mainly. I really don’t understand the attraction of watching football, tedious and pointless in the extreme. When people at work talk about it I don’t feel left out, I just ignore them. We do talk about other things as well.
This poor maligned woman is right. We should talk about leaving the EU, how awful Labour and socialists generally are and how freedom of speech is crucial.
Thank you Anne for this brave and stunning statement
I remember going on a course in the US with about a dozen others from the UK. I was surprised how many of that party either had an interest in American sports or who had swotted it up. Towards the end of the course we invited our instructors out for a meal and one of their number ended up on our table, one against seven. Six of them proceded enthusiastically to make ‘informed’ comments on ‘the game’. It very quickly became apparent that our instructor was no more a sports follower than I, (i.e. not at all – Stanley Mathews and Roger Bannister are my limit), but he did have a team, purely to survive those ‘water cooler moments’.
I’ve never even bothered with that. On the occasions someone opens with sports chat, I just politely tell them that I don’t follow it and look to move the conversation in a different direction.
My firm allows free discussion on anything….. as long as it doesn’t upset someone, anyone actually even outsiders. I’ve been dragged into the thought police a few times now and once I was in real danger of losing my job.
I now spend my time pointing out to people that I’m unable to comment on this and that because of company rules and I show them the evidence if pushed. Most are unaware of this and I love these discussions with management.
I suspect they are fed up with me and one day they will find something to use so I’m careful about what I say now.
Go wokeness.
My boss and his boss spend the first ten minutes of every day talking about football. The first five to ten minutes of every meeting I attend is also spent talking about football
Personally I find it rather tedious, but as an adult, I just ignore it, I don’t want to force them to stop
They know I like snooker, so sometimes they try to engage me in a conversation about that, but to be honest, sport isn’t really something I enjoy having discussions about, even if it’s a sport I like; I prefer to just watch it
Likewise. I don’t expect people to want to discuss the IOMTT. Frankly, I don’t either. I go to watch it. When it’s done, that’s it. I have no interest in dissecting it afterwards.
I will stop talking about sport, movies and beer in the workplace provided there is also a rule to stop women yattering on about babies, menstruation, kittens, Hollyoaks and fucking Love Island.
Quid pro quo…