The common streak that runs through former schoolmates and former workmates is this;

Both categories of people always nurse this terrible notion that your destinies are one and the same. I hate bumping into former workmates and such simply because this lot hardly ever grows –forever stuck in the first gear:

When you meet an old workmate at the street corner, they immediately run of their mouth with redundancies: "So where are you these days?” "How are things moving?” "Where is so-and-so-and-so?” If this former workmate is still at the same job, they will now take it upon themselves to bring you up to speed on the latest bland gossip there.

Usually they will tell you that while things were bad during your time there, they are only getting worse.

Choosing to ignore the reason you quit that job in the first place, they will remind you of how sourly you are missed by former colleagues, even those with who you never really saw eye to eye. They will then proceed to nudge you to trace your tracks back to the warm, welcoming hands of your former boss and workmates.

But former schoolmates seem to suckle from the same breast as former workmates. Long lost former OBs/OGs have only one thing in mind when they bump into you; to know if/and where you work.

When an OB or OG asks where you work presently, usually they are doing it for their self first and foremost; they want ammunition to talk about you when they bump into the next former schoolmate. This also serves the added advantage of allowing them to gauge their own career and work progress vis-à-vis yours.

So don’t go on to tell that OB of yours the bitter truth of how you’re grassing and visiting office after office with brown, CV-stuffed envelopes. If you don’t have a job, tell a lie to the contrary.

Tell them you have a job which comes with perks such as a chauffeur and frequent vacation allowances. And while at it, be ready for your OB’s plea to bail them out since you attended the same school and wolfed down on the same weevil-infested beans.

Former bosses are another lot to tread carefully before meeting simply because what do you say to your former employer when you bump into them at a nightclub during that bucket promotion?

Lastly, always do your utmost best to avoid running into people who are broke and at the same time mad at people who are grinding.