I'm out shopping at Stacey's, the bookstore. I have to get something for my department's Secret Santa party on Tuesday. I frickin' hate the whole Secret Santa thing. Out of all the things I have to worry about, the last thing I want to worry about is trying to find some cute gift between $5-$10 bucks for someone I barely know and who'll probably pretend it's great to be polite and then throw away within hours.

Anyways, as I'm there, running around frantically cause I l have a lot of other errands to do and somewhere to be in an hour, I run into someone I used to work with. Ruh-oh.

Yep, another dilemma. Do the stop n' chat or the moving hello?

We used to work in the same department (in fact, at one point her office looked right out at my cubicle) and we were kind of friends in that co-worker kind of way. She was also on the fringe of a really close circle of co-worker friends, which meant that we'd often hang out after work with our other co-workers. I hadn't seen her in a long time, or at least talked to her because I have seen her a few times, but mainly when she was being all Shmoopyish with her boyfriend.

Now, I'm kind of happy to see her, kind of curious about what she was up to as the last thing I had heard was that she had been (surprise, surprise) laid off, but on the other hand, for various reasons, I kind of didn't care. Especially since I'm in a rush trying to find my stupid stupid Secret gift.

Unfortunately, she's walking right at me and there's no avoiding the fact we're about to have a run-in. Now, the stop n' chat would be the polite thing to do, but I don't really have the time nor in the mood for chit-chat. The moving hello, however, would be kind of rude. What kind of friends were we? Does she care? What does she want to do?

So I hedge my bets. As we pass each other and say hi, I pause, just for a second, in case she wants to talk. She doesn't. She says hi and moves on. She gives me the moving hello (bitch- umm, that's a joke). Luckily, I think her family was with her and she didn't have time. And she's also probably thinking all the same things I was. Because us neurotic people know how other neurotic people think.

Emergency averted, I continued on for my search for the perfect Secret Santa gift.