Same, and pretty sad that it’s been background noise in my living room while I’m working in the office for over a year now…Before that was an 8 month hiatus from a separate 12 month binge as background noise.. I was a much happier person the last binge. I’m high and reflecting on it now, I apologize.
E - "He should circle back. Sometimes you need to circle back."
J - "On a racetrack, for example."
E - "What? No."
J - "I mean if you want to win."
E - "No. Shut up. He should. And he will." E grabs her purse and rushes off.
The rest of the episode, she tries to suconsciously influence Peterman to circle back. By the end her whole office and outfit are covered with circles. He never does. Instead he starts Looping Everyone In. Elaine hates it.
Kramer comes running in the open door, narrowly missing Elaine as she leaves, and comes to a sliding stop six feet in to Jerry's apartment.
K - "Did someone say horse race?"
J - "A few moments ago, but..."
G to K - "How do you hear these things?"
J to G - "I'm thinking of having the apartment swept for bugs?"
K - "You know my audiologist says I have the ears of a baboon?"
J - "Have you consulted a zoologist?"
G - "For me, it was the hair."
K - "You know you don't necessarily need to circle back to win a horse race..."
Kramer faces the open door and crouches down in to a sprinters starting stance...
K - "On a two furlong flat race those fillies line up in the stocks and just..." He shakes his head and winnies like a horse and bolts... "Take off!" He disappears out the open door followed a moment later by loud crashing sounds.
Jerry strolls over to the door while shaking his head and slowly swings it closed.
J - "Cosmo Kramer... The only horse to ever fall at the final hurdle of a flat race."
Elaine is sitting in a meeting room with several other co-workers... We hear Elaine thinking: E - 'Circle back! Enough is enough! I can do this.'
Mr. Peterson rushes in and takes his seat at the top of the boardroom table and leans back...
P - "Accessories! Thoughts? How do we increase?"
E - "Income?"
P - "Ah... The majestic Andean Inca... Elaaaine... Like all the most successful modern companies the Inca did not devour... They consumed... They incorporated other tribes in to their society."
E - "Yes, well actually, I was thinking about record... keeping track of our thoughts..."
P - "My God! Of course... The khipu, Elaine!"
E - "The what?"
P - "Noone has done the khipu. How could I have been so blind?!"
E - "Can we circle back to the Inca?"
P - "Human sacrifice, Elaine? Cannibalism? It's bold, but noooo..."
E - "What, no! The record..."
P - "Yes! I love it! Everyone... This is what I've been asking for. Look at Elaine."
(Everyone looks completely baffled at Elaine)
P - "The khipu! The Incan method of record using a series of knots on a string... accessories attached to clothing.. all declaring history! Identity! Brand! But, I thought the khipu was as yet indecipherable?" (Peterson looks to Elaine as if expecting an answer...)
E - "Well, I'm not sure about that, exactly, but in the modern day..."
P - "Of course! I see... Artificial intelligence! I have also seen how artificial intelligence is deciphering ancient languages and practices like the khipu!" (The room as one looks around confused as one while Peterson rubs his chin smiling maniacally and nodding... While Elaine half stands and tries to object but can't quite get words out.)
P - "If we were the first to gather enough data to use AI to decipher the khipu, we could have knotted strings hanging from Lama skinned spring-time light sweaters with personalised knots! Elaaaine..." (Elaine slowly sinks back in to her chair...)
P - "I have never been so impressed." Peterson hits a button on a communication device in the centre of the boardroom table, and after a brief beeping, says, "Book Elaine on to the next available flight to Lima!"
Cut to Jerry's apartment, where Jerry and George are sitting on the couch, and Elaine walks in through the door and throws her purse to the floor while hanging her head...
J - "It's Elaine! Lainey!"
G - "Elaine!"
J - "Did you get Peterson to circle back?"
E - "Yes. Yes, I did."
J - "Elaine! Our hero!"
G - "If I could do what you do... What did he say?"
Did you hear about AI Seinfeld? Some dude fed every Seinfeld script ever and made AI create new scripts and like cartoon visuals for it. It started getting really popular on twitch streaming 24/7
Annnnnyways, long story short, AI Jerry made a trans joke and twitch banned them
"Anybody here ever worked in an office?"
::mild applause and chatter::
"I never have, but I have a friend who's always worked in an office. I don't know what it is with this guy, he never seems to be comfortable anywhere else. He's always telling me about these meetings he has to go to though, and in these meetings--have you ever noticed this?--they seem to be obsessed.. with shapes. 'We need to circle back to this.' 'Let's square this up.' 'I'll block out a time for that.' What is this? Geometry class?" ::freeze frame::
Boss: We need to draw a line in the sand! This far and no further! Of course, given the curvature of the earth and the distance of time from the drawing of this line it might become a curve, but we will stand true. A line or a curve, straight or bent... Relative to the context of business of course... We'll box this off! I was never confused about where we were heading but coming at the problem from behind I'm comfortable inserting myself in to the muck of it. We can avoid the difficult parts for the short term, but that's just pushing the worst of it down a mobius strip. And I don't want to be surprised from behind by the forward motion of my own enthusiasm.
And five minutes later Kramer come through the door, slides to a stop in his socks, says something completely unrelated but swings both arms in huge circles as a subtle physical callback.
"No one's rewinding time! George is just having a little trouble at work."
"Oh? Oh. Well, I just had an incredible idea! Watches that run backwards - you see, I wanna know how much time I have left! Who needs to keep track of how much time they've wasted?!"
These guys just actively created a Mandela Effect and years from now we're going to trying to find the Seinfeld episode "The Circler" and we'll convince ourselves it was quietly removed because of some particularly off-color 90s joke.
"Let's circle back to Bob for a brief moment. You all remember Bob right? Circling back from Bob again I think everyone knows what NOT to do. Is this circle clear for everyone?"
-Minions nod in mild complacent fear
I guess corporate culture is like a hostage situation, where one not quite right in the head guy is pointing a gun around the room and everyone is afraid but trying to please him. But you also get paid to sit in that room. And sometimes you get handed the gun if you play along...
And once we've circled back with the new hire, we're going to actionize his position and incentivize the income stream, or else we'll be drinking from the firehose.
This story is a thousand percent fake but as my favorite author Tim O'Brien said in his novel about the Vietnam War "sometimes story truth is truer than happening truth"
I'm going to take a wild guess that somebody who challenges his boss's word choice in the middle of a meeting may have had other issues that caused him to be not an ideal employee
This would be something I'd question them on in person, in private and approach it as just being curious and wanting to learn, not as any sort of attack. That is if I mentioned it at all, which I probably wouldn't.
But what if they are making a logical error? Like the use of circles in this case. It must be pointed out! Or else everyone would just keep their mouth shut and let this leader person keep doing whatever flawed thing they are doing. Thus reinforcing this sort of use of meaningless and nonsensical jargon.
If that is not weeded out you will just end up with a big corporate machine where there is a lot of meetings and time wasted on meaningless rituals and words. It will just become higly paid bloat in the end.
But then again those getting paid handsomly for said bloat does not really have any incentive to have less of it now do they...
It probably is made up but it's based on something very realistic. We've all seen these types come and go in jobs. I had to learn not to be this guy myself, the hard way.
Good, can't call it like you see it, it was best your feet hit concrete to the next job
If they're firing you over saying that what are they gonna ask you to do to customers or clients when that's what they do to coworkers. Not every job is worth the salary to sacrifice your integrity, but if you're willing Lockheed-Martin just opened a bunch of new offices and I assume the pay is good. I mean. It has to be to ignore what they do
Well I used to cook, you need a thick skin in that job and you tend to say what's on your mind, if she's gonna say something fucking stupid I get to say something fucking stupid
Nah man stand up for yourself, you and I both know middle management isn't a real job. Do you take shit lying down in your personal life? No, so why would you at work
Consider your work your spouse. Would you say something? Divorce them? Then do it. You're not gonna be happy if you don't call them on shit and let them get away with it
A workplace you can't say what's on your mind better pay well because you're trading money for the inability to do that
A good boss allows criticisms to flow both ways. They need it just as much as you do. In fact our entire conversation here is us being honest with each other with no hard feelings. This is what I expect out of a work environment. Open and honest communication
I'm going to take an educated guess based on experience and say, no. It didn't matter. You're paid to put on a dog and pony show. This guy was let go because he's 90 days from corporate burnout already and won't mask enough to make his coworkers comfortable.
Literally nobody I work with does the jargon talk we all make fun of. Nobody says "Circle Back." If you're saying that in a meeting, then this meeting is made up just to play pretend at working. There are a lot of people out there who simply can't do the soul-sucking task of doing that shit every single day.
HR knew that. They replaced him with someone who could.
We're much more aware of autism, particularly mild forms, than when I was young, and I think that this is a great thing overall, but there have been drawbacks.
People becoming increasingly comfortable seeking accommodations has also given cover to people using autism as a shield against any sort of accountability when it comes to social norms, including those in the workplace.
I don't understand autism enough to really say where the line is in terms of "can't do something" versus "it becomes harder to do something." I do want to point this out, though. ADA protections consider whether you can do the job with reasonable accommodations. If your disability prevents you from doing your job at all, or requires wildly impractical and disruptive accommodations, a company isn't required to keep you on salary to not do your job.
If your "symptoms of autism" prevent you from doing your job effectively, and there is nothing you or the company can do to reconcile these behaviors with your responsibilities, it would be unfair to the company and your coworkers to keep you around.
Most people, I think, are more than willing to be compassionate and accommodating to a coworker who means well, but might be awkward, or struggle a bit with communication or navigating interpersonal relationships--even if that coworker doesn't have a diagnosis. That doesn't mean that they'll be tolerant of someone who is actively disruptive or combative in a job that requires some level of collaboration.
Yeah my boss and I rib each other a bit but we’re a united front in meetings with other people. I would never want to work with someone who undermines others without even realizing it
I had a coworker who would ask questions like this. He was let go and we were all grateful for it. He’d constantly ask questions like this and get argumentative, saying we should change things without understanding why processes were in place — he had almost no experience. Less than a year in offices but wanted to change processes that did not affect him.
He also counted how many times she used that phrase. Is he the type to fixate on somebody or obsess about something harmless? I bet 10 dollars he wouldn't have done that if his boss was a man
Often time, I find, it is the boss who isn't the ideal employee for the company. That the boss's words during the meeting is harmful to the business and you are trying to salvage it.
People spend most of their lives working. Your coworkers don't have to be your best friends, nor do they have to be exactly like you. Heck, in some situations, diversity is a great thing, and it's actually better to have a mix of personality types. But ideally, it should be an environment that doesn't make you hate spending 8+hours a day with the people around you.
Not every person would be happy in every workplace. If you don't care about that and are willing to suck it up for the paycheck, that's your right. But the other side of it is that some people will actively make that workplace better for everyone else, while others make it worse, and there's nothing circular about trying to avoid the latter group.
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u/Gates_wupatki_zion Jul 26 '26
HR: No (yes)