smile, BI-ATCH!

I work in a fairly large office these days, and recently I've become aware that a large-office dilema is walk-by greetings. I walk past about 20 people at their desks every time I go to the photocopier (or more likely, the tea room!) and I just don't know what the protocol is for mass-employee greetings. Do you greet every person you walk past? Is one greeting sufficient for a cluster of desks? Or is it accepted that after about the first 5 people it's safe to just give the quasi-smile?

I'm actually all for greeting every single person I walk past, alternating between verbal greetings and smiles (I'm not quite down with butt-slaps yet). But I notice that a lot of other people in the office think it's cool to IGNORE ME!!

The trend seems to be that greetings die down around mid-morning and kick in again mid-afternoon a couple of hours before the end of the day. Did I miss this memo? Or is it just an unwritten law of the large office?

At work we use Australian Standards as a guide for engineering practices. I think there should be a set of standards for large-office greetings. These standards should include Limit State Design Capacities of a Mid-morning Greeting, Recommended Deformation Limits for Cracking a Smile, Long-term Effects of Short-term Eye Contact*, and Ultimate Stress Design for Mondays.

*by Mase