Working healthcare, I tell all other healthcare / first responders “I hope you have a boring shift” (every once in a while a younger person objects, but they are almost immediately hushed / corrected by their senior coworker).
But it occurs to me that many office / sedentary workers might not find this to be a blessing. What would I say to a desk worker that might be equivalent?
May you have no teacher dreams. Teacher dreams, common among teachers, generally have you going to class unprepared or having a class out of control.
One thing that was common in my EMS organization.
Don’t say the ‘Q’ word!
Q=quiet. If you say 'it’s a quiet night, you’re sure to get slammed.
I once told my EMT student that if he said “quiet” one more time I was throwing him off my truck and sending him home. He laughed. I was not joking. I’d been slammed all week and it was a pretty chill day and I needed the break.
Instead of telling co-workers goodbye in EMS, it’s common to say “be safe”
Hope your Friday is read-only. Because no one wants to ship code changes on a Friday. (No one will be there on the weekend to babysit changes)
Not my line of work, but I think that acting’s “break a leg” is a pretty oddball benediction.
- Happy landings
- Keep the blue side up
- May you have fair weather and clear skies
May your code run on the second try. Because if it works the first time, that’s suspicious. And if it fails the second time, that’s frustrating.
Unless you didn’t change anything. Then it’s unsettling.
If it fails the second time, that’s reproducibility.
If it fails randomly then starts working again the next day without any changes, that’s when you get yourself a headache. And it took someone’s wife, a year later, to figure out the failures only happen on Tuesdays.
“Hopefully we’ll see you back here in a bit.” - tacitly acknowledging that, uh, certain jobs and worksites have incredible danger and uncertainty attached to them.
May your knife chip and shatter
When people are working I like to tell them I hope it goes by quickly. They prob’ly tired.
