In the early days of my obsession with eBay, a comically aggressive message was often added to the description of items offered for sale: no timewasters please.
What’s that all about? I said to myself. Sounds a bit strung out. Back then, I was less knackered and overstretched. “Chillax mate!” muttered the old me, perplexed at the defensive, irascible tone of these harassed sellers.
Around the same time, during a busy afternoon in the FT newsroom, I was equally taken aback by a colleague doing something similar in person. Faced with the conversational advances of a fellow hack telling him about some problem, he simply rejected the approach.