[cookiecaper]

What a disappointing reply. You'd really rather shoot yourself than listen to someone talk about their children? No wonder you don't get along with your colleagues. I'd really invest in lightening up, this is an awfully depressing outlook.

[LaGrange]

No. The outlook when we are all reduced to breeding engines that have to like talking about children or else -- that's depressing.

I don't see anything depressing about having a walk in the sun, and then eating whatever I like, while either focusing on the food or a book or whatever I actually want to.

And then there's this prevalent assumption that this means I wouldn't get along with my colleagues, or that I would hate my job. Well, you're wrong, I'm just a person that needs actual alone time. Not headphones-on-head simulated alone time (I actually rarely do that) but real alone time when the nearest coworker is half a mile away.

[cookiecaper]

It's fine to not really love talking to colleagues about their children, but if it's so unpleasant for you to "hear anything about their children" that you'd hyperbolize it by saying you'd "rather shoot [your]self", then that's a problem. For people who have children, children are a huge part of their life and to pretend like they should never be able to discuss such a significant part of their life with others is really silly. I can understand being annoyed with someone if it's all they talk about it or they otherwise engage in that topic excessively, but the description given by edw is way far out there.

Nothing wrong with going for a walk, either. I would usually eat lunch alone when I was in a corporate environment. It's really just the anti-social and frankly mean approach taken to normal conversation and interaction by edw that put me off.

[LaGrange]

The problem may be hard to notice or acknowledge for many people, but there's actually a lot of pressure put on people to socialize in some way and interact in some way, and that is mean. Being mean in return may not be the most effective reaction, but it is quite understandable.

To illustrate you how badly skewed it is: for a few years, me and my partner had a foster home for stray kittens. In Poland. That means lots of hard work that rarely pays off (by having a healthy kitten that gets adopted, there is no money in it, obviously), depressing amount of death and suffering, participating in such great activities as autopsies and interventions.

It was a significant part of our lives, our passion and when it paid off, it brought immense satisfaction. It was a very natural subject of talk for us, but really -- do you want to hear about the state of an inflamed heart we found in a dissected kitten, what happens to bodily functions when some dude flails a cat while holding it by the tail, how a neglected cat lost her eye to disease or other fascinating subjects from this category? All those conversations while eating?

Then why should people who aren't passionate about children endure conversations about children defecating? Really. I can handle it, of course (while I don't love it), but I can repay with a story about a dog eating her own intestines, so I'm probably not a benchmark for most sensitive listener.

People not wanting to hear about babies are just like people not wanting to hear about eyes falling out of sockets, it's only ours (yeah, I can talk about babies too) presuppositions that make the subjects seem so different.

(btw, if you rob me of my daily walk, I will fall asleep in your office)