I am an abject failure at the “How’s it goin’?” game. It’s a standard feature of most offices. You pass someone in the hall (maybe someone you know, maybe someone you don’t), you give a perfunctory smile and a slight arch of the eyebrows and say, “How’s it goin’?” It’s actually said more like one word, and more like a statement than a question: howzitgoin.
Maybe it’s only a standard feature in casual West Coast offices. I imagine that in East Coast offices they either grimace at each other or undress one another with their eyes as they pass. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from film and television, anyway. And my understanding is that between the coasts they all grow corn for a living, so they don’t have to worry about it.
I’m not cut out to play the Howzitgoin game. I don’t think I’m designed for it. When I’m walking through the halls at work, I’m typically lost in some thought about what I’m going to eat for dinner that night or what I’d like to look up next on Wikipedia. I’m not ready for quick-start socializing. If someone’s going to talk to me, I prefer to have a few hours’ warning.
So I never say the right thing. Sometimes a guy will give me a howzitgoin and I just say, “Hey man.” Oh shit, I think immediately after, maybe he was expecting a real answer and a return howzitgoin. Ah, but he only mumbled his howzitgoin anyway, so I’m sure he wasn’t. But wait, maybe he was!
Of course, there are variations on the theme of the Howzitgoin game. There’s the howeryou, the whatsappenin, and the howyadoin. The last of these I’m totally unprepared for. I didn’t grow up with howyadoin. It sounds sort of New York-ish to me. So when I’m blindsided by a howyadoin, my response is a garbled mishmash of all the possible responses one could give to the various themes of the Howzitgoin game: “Good! How’s—your . . . uh . . . doing?” Fuck, I hope she thinks I’m boring and was only asking that to be nice and wouldn’t waste her time listening to my idiotic answer.
I can’t decide how I feel about getting a howzitgoin without my name included. On the one hand, getting a bare “Howzitgoin” seems callously impersonal. It only underscores how routine the exchange is. But on the other hand, getting a “Howzitgoin, Dan” makes me feel obligated to respond with the other person’s name. And I can’t think that fast. In the fight-or-flight state induced by receiving a howzitgoin, my mind turns Jack’s into John’s and Andy’s into Amy’s. So I mumble something like, “Good, Perdle, how’s are you?” getting maybe the first letter and the number of syllables correct. Fuck, I hope that guy doesn’t remember what his name is.
Even worse are the fake-out howzitgoins. Sometimes I’ll be walking toward someone who’s otherwise occupied (maybe sending a text message or reading a sheet of paper). He looks up just at the last moment we could possibly make eye contact, and I give a brief smile and nod, thinking I’m going to get away with only that. But then, after our shoulders have already passed, I hear a howzitgoin. At this point I’m already celebrating having avoided a howzitgoin, so my mind has to switch gears rapidly. I have to think up a response, while walking and doing a little half-turn, then project my voice since this guy is now 10 feet past me, and all I can get out is a low, feral sound like “Eghhhhhh.” You just made me do an off-balance howzitgoin, asshole. Rude.
But worst of all are the change-ups. There are some people who howzitgoin me all the time, so I know to expect it from them. I’ll see someone come around the corner of the hall fifty feet ahead of me. Okay, I think, here it comes. I’m ready to respond. I can smell the howzitgoin before it’s uttered. We keep walking toward each other. Finally we make eye contact. But she changes up on me and says, “Hi, Dan.” I’m so keyed up at this point, though, that I just blurt out, like a fucking automaton: “PRETTY GOOD, HOW ARE YOU?!”
Swing and a miss. Shit.
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