"Hey! So nice to see that you have legs!"
After two years of working from home, this is the kind of humiliating nonsense that tumbles out of my mouth when I encounter colleagues in person for the first time.
But what do you say?
"Nice to meet you" makes it sound like you haven't even noticed them in all those Zoom calls. And if that's the case, you're trying extra hard to pretend it isn't. And if that's not the case, you've probably already decided from their behavior (or their backdrop) in those calls that they're a jerk to be avoided or that they're destined to be your new best friend once you meet in real life and either way now you've got to work extra hard to play it cool.
Meanwhile, you're fighting the instinct to initiate a hug or a handshake because you don't want to look like you're one of those people who doesn't believe in Covid. And also you're just plain out of practice.
And so you blurt things out like like "I know you!" or "You're real! or "You have two legs!" as if encountering the Easter Bunny, or your very first biped.
Maybe it's just me.
What I wanted to say to my colleague was:
Hey! Wow! We've been working together for months but we've only ever interacted in Zoom meetings so this is the first time we've had informal small talk and you seem cool but also surprisingly tall and this is lovely and even though I'm an introvert with misanthropic tendencies after two years of working from home I'm kind of desperate for this sort of socializing so I'm actually really glad that we can do this now and I'm looking forward to much more of it going forward but right at this moment I'm plumb out of things to say and eager to return to tapping buttons on my laptop and so I've got to go but let's think about becoming office besties or at least maybe going to lunch at the same time if by chance in addition to having legs you are also a creature that eats food.
But that would be awkward.
—ML
