I'm in a similar situation and I'm getting very frustrated with my coworkers. I want to be assertive and terse.. "I'm sorry, I'm here to work." is probably cons

I'm in a similar situation and I'm getting very frustrated with my coworkers. I want to be assertive and terse.. "I'm sorry, I'm here to work." is probably considered by most to be aggressive (but the culture here is also getting to lax and fresh reminder that we are getting paid to GTD). So perhaps "I'm sorry now is not a good time." is probably "better". Yes, often times people will stop coming by to chat about "personal" issues but not everyone and not all the time! It will also get you a bad label which can be as bad as being a remote worker (especially at Yahoo right now). "People Skills! You have to have people skills!" Apparently WE get labeled as lacking people skills when in reality its the people that can't pick up on nonverbal cues that we have work to do that don't have people skills! We can talk about Breaking Bad, what you did last weekend, what you are doing this weekend over lunch.