english idiot — 1 explainer, sort of

english idiot, as a regional subspecies, has habits the group chat would never recognise. my mother called on sunday between small-hour revelations about exactly this, and ice cream, again, qualifies as breakfast in nine countries, which i looked up and refuse to cite.

i’m writing this from the desk at 3:14pm on a thursday, because carla is upstairs in a vendor walkthrough on the third floor and the rest of the morning is, technically, mine. i have a notebook open and a tab i won’t close. that’s the whole staff meeting i needed.

the english idiot is a vibe more than a passport. it lives in the way you say “anyway” twice in a row when you’ve forgotten the point. it lives in standing up before the host has finished offering you a seat. mom said as much, on sunday, around the part of the call where she asks if i’m eating, and i say yes, the way a person says yes about the idiot in general terms when their mouth has cereal in it.

english idiot, the cultural variant

the english idiot is not the dictionary kind. that one has a whole etymology, a whole shelf of books, and at least one british tv credit you can find on an idiot abroad, which i bring up because karl pilkington built a career out of being the calm version of a bewildered tourist, and that’s basically the brief.

my version is smaller and louder. the english idiot is the person who reads the menu out loud as if performing for a panel. the person who calls every meeting “lovely” and means none of it. the person who, when offered a fork or a spoon, picks the fork and uses it on soup and considers it a victory.

i won’t pretend this is universal. there’s a more general kind of person, sometimes called a moron, who shares some traits and not others; for the deeper taxonomy of the moron and its different shades, read it yourself, i’ve already linked the moron explainer twice on slow afternoons. the english idiot is a subspecies. small claims court. local rules.

nine things english idiots do that travel poorly, also me

this is the list. it has 9 items. i counted them on a napkin from a coffee shop i visited at lunch, then taped the napkin to my notebook, because filing systems are for people with houses.

1. apologises before entering a doorway. the doorway is empty. there is no one to apologise to. the english idiot says “sorry” anyway, in the direction of the door, and proceeds. i did this twice this morning at reception. the receptionist, who has seen me do it before, did not look up.

2. uses “no worries” for anything between minor inconvenience and structural collapse. the office burned down? no worries. you missed my birthday by three years? no worries. somebody owes me $300 and won’t pick up? no worries, dave, no worries at all. the english idiot has one register and uses it for everything, like a microwave with a single button.

3. says “right, so” before every sentence that contains a request. “right, so the report” means “do the report”. “right, so the kitchen” means “clean the kitchen”. translation is automatic and mostly accurate. mom does a version of this on sunday calls, except hers starts with “now, listen”, which is somehow louder.

4. eats ice cream for breakfast and explains it. ice cream is breakfast. it has milk in it. it has sugar, which is energy. the english idiot will deliver this argument over a kitchen counter at 11:34am to no audience, then eat the ice cream, then file the bowl in the dishwasher next to a coffee cup that hasn’t moved since tuesday. i stand by it.

5. confuses politeness with consent. if the english idiot nods, it does not mean yes. it means “i would like this conversation to end without injury to either of us”. carla learned this in week one. now she just walks past my desk and leaves whatever she needs on the keyboard, like feeding a vending machine.

6. reads instructions in the wrong order. step 4, step 1, step 7, step 2, then a small fire, then step 3. this is how i assembled the standing desk i sit at, and how i assembled the conversation i had with mom on sunday, where i answered the second question first and the first question never.

7. owns one tie. the english idiot has one tie, in a colour that goes with nothing, and wears it to weddings, funerals, and the occasional all-hands. the tie is older than my last three jobs. it has been ironed twice. i refuse to fight that war.

8. mistakes a list for a plan. the english idiot writes the list, photographs the list, sends the list to themselves, and then loses the phone for an hour. by the end of the day the list is a museum piece. the museum is the kitchen counter. the curator is brenda, who is a dead plant, and a quiet one.

9. resorts to “sort of” when cornered. are you good at your job? sort of. are you happy? sort of. is this a guide? sort of. the english idiot will use “sort of” the way a magician uses a curtain. nothing is hidden, technically. but no one’s looking at the right hand either.

SORT. OF. IS. A WHOLE. PERSONALITY.

the 2 am revelation about cultural drift

at 2 am on a wednesday, which i remember because i had the bedside light on and a glass of water that tasted like the tap, i realized the english idiot is a translation issue.

here is the thing nobody told me. cultural drift means a phrase you use at the office stops meaning what you think it means after about eight years. “no worries” used to be a kindness. now it’s a verbal shrug that the americans, the australians, the people in the basement comms team, all hear differently. you can’t run a meeting on a shrug. you can run a kitchen on a shrug. the english idiot does not see the difference.

i wrote this down in the dark, on a notebook i keep next to the mattress for exactly this kind of small-hour conviction, and in the morning the handwriting was a crime against handwriting. but the idea survived. the idea is that the english idiot is a person who treats the office as a kitchen and the kitchen as an office. one of these will eventually catch fire. probably the kitchen, statistically.

closing pulpit, ice cream is breakfast

the closing argument for the english idiot, if there is one, is the breakfast argument. ice cream is breakfast. you’ve heard this from me before, you’ll hear it again, and the only correct response is “right, so”. if you want a bigger frame, i wrote about the broader category earlier in this post and the link is up there. read it. don’t read it. sort of.

this is what an english idiot looks like at scale. one tie. one microwave that is the seventh i’ve owned. one dead plant called brenda. one mother who calls on sunday and knows, somehow, before i do, that i ate ice cream for breakfast on the day she’s calling about. mothers know. it’s their power. it cannot be defeated.