We Can Talk Without a Reason

The little conversations at the office that are not really about anything matter more than they seem. And they are exactly what remote work tends to lose.

Reaching out to a colleague online always feels as though you ought to have a reason. Ideally, you have thought the question through and written out all the context. If you can solve it yourself, you try not to bother anyone. This is efficient, of course, but it also gradually creates a habit: if there is nothing specific to discuss, you say nothing.

The office is different. When two people happen to run into each other on the way to get some water, neither has to decide first whether the conversation is worth the other person’s time. What they had for lunch or why it suddenly turned cold is reason enough to talk. They can stop halfway through and return to work without reaching any conclusion.

I once read an amusing account. A man was asked by a stranger what he did for work. He said he served food at Lao Xiang Ji, a Chinese restaurant chain, and the conversation went from stir-fried pork to braised chicken with edamame, then to what to eat as a final meal before the end of the world. Twenty minutes later, the other person still had no idea who he really was.

The author wrote that the essence of small talk is having nothing of substance to say—so little that afterward, you cannot even recount what you talked about.

I like that ease. But “not knowing who you are” may be only half true. The other person may not know your background, but they probably have some sense of what it is like to talk with you: whether you can take a joke, whether a difference of opinion will be met with a correction, whether it is all right to say something pointless.

Those impressions follow people back into their work.

We cannot have a well-formed question ready every time we approach a colleague. Sometimes something simply feels off, but we cannot explain why. Sometimes the question is so small that sending a message just for that feels oddly formal, let alone scheduling a meeting. If you already chat casually now and then, it is often easier to ask in moments like these.

Remote work does not prevent these conversations. It just means that every one of them has to be initiated by someone. What once happened by chance now needs a reason.

On note, I read about an experiment by a team at Goodpatch. In an existing good-morning thread on Slack, they began posting one small question each day: What food do you like? What did you want to be when you were a child? People could answer if they wanted, or simply read along. One member said that having a topic made it easier to join in. Instead of having to start a casual conversation out of nowhere, all you had to do was answer.

I find this detail more convincing than talk of “building team cohesion.” It may not be that people do not want to chat; they may just not know where to begin. Once someone puts the first sentence out there, speaking up becomes a little easier.

But I would not want this to become another expectation at work. Delivering results is already part of the job. Having to show that you are interesting, sociable, and full of enthusiasm for life on top of that would be exhausting. What makes small talk valuable is precisely that you do not have to perform well. If even not replying requires an explanation, it becomes just another task.

I still do not know how remote work can bring back this kind of spontaneity. At the very least, “come to me anytime if you need anything” does not seem to be enough. It still requires the other person to need something first.