Yeah, I’ve thought the same. It’s like with ads on websites - ads are served from different domains and as blockers work by denying requests to those domains. If they really wanted they could serve the ads from the same domain as the rest of the website. I guess one day they might but so far it must not be worth it.

Yeah you can have a PIN with Island.

Assuming you’re asking about the password manager?

Most important for me is that with Bitwarden I can share passwords with someone else.

They’re such a good idea we’ve even kept them after Brexit.

Interesting, I’ve always had the opposite problem - whatever I say they cut way too much off the top. Perhaps we should go together and order each other’s cuts?

I’m not sure I have anything helpful to say other than to suggest keep trying different places until you find one that listens?

There’s a small number of surprisingly aggressive and unhelpful responses here. People are different and the world, especially the workplace, is made by extroverts and that can be difficult for those of us that are more introverted.

In an ideal world your colleagues would be mindful of that but unfortunately that’s often not the case (and of course extroverts often don’t engage in a whole lot of self reflection).

You’re going to have to put up with a bit of annoying small talk. Try to find something that’s a compromise you can live with. After that I’d say being polite but direct is best… nice chatting but I need to get back to work. No further elaboration is required.

You can also try telling some people that you’re not a big chatter or something and that you like to just get on with work. See how that goes, people are often more understanding than you would expect.

(I should say I live in the UK and work in a technical industry so YMMV).

You probably don’t even need to remember much. Just asking how the kids are is enough, anything more specific than that is just a bonus.

This is good advice. Headphones can also work on another level as a signal that you’re getting stuff done and don’t want to be disturbed. Not all my colleagues get that but perhaps 9/10 do.

I’ll give you a short answer as you’ve got a lot of detailed ones already: to a native British English speaker “six oh five a m” sounds completely normal. There are other ways to say it that sound equally normal.