Third-year psychology student Terence Davidson found himself in an awkward and annoying situation on the weekend when his physical appearance caused passers-by to all make the same lame attempt at humour during his walk home.
Davidson, who had just played a game of soccer for the VUW Football Club, endured a long walk home to Thorndon in his muddy game clothes while random people in the street yelled at him “Hard day at the office, eh son?”, or some variation thereof, in an attempt to be original and funny.
“I’ll admit, the first two times it was a little funny,” Davidson explained to Salient. “Then it got weird and kind of—YES, HA HA, VERY FUNNY—sorry, it got kind of annoying.”
This is not the first time that a situation has caused observers to all make the same humorous remark. In 2008, Wellingtonian Andrew Bremner walked through the Central Business District with his then-3-year-old daughter Sally with a scratch on his face, while people told him not to “let them win the fights while they’re so young, or [he’s] screwed,” and, just last year, “WALK OF SHAAAAME!!!” comments increased by 27%.
Davidson explained that the attempts of observational humour didn’t usually happen, because that morning he had OH, RIGHT, LIKE [HE HADN’T] HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE slept in and didn’t bring a change of clothes to the game.
“Eventually I just started preempting people… If they looked like they were about to ask about my rough day at the office, I would go, ‘I’VE JUST HAD A ROUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE MATE, YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT!’ That was fun, but it got quite old quite fast.
“I can understand why this thing happens. It’s just everyone sees me in my muddy soccer clothes in town, which is odd, and then tries to say something funny about it. Only that everyone comes up with the same thing. I guess deep down, we’re all essentially the same boring person.”
When queried as to whether or not he had a hard day at the office, Davidson told Salient to go fuck a stick.