‘I saw the story about the floods on all the front pages and, before I knew it, I’d asked if he was from Pakistan. It turns out his family is, but their village is on a hill so they’re okay.’ There followed a brief conversation on the necessity of ‘making do’ in difficult situations.

Mr Trantor is now concerned that he’ll have to engage in conversation on future visits to the newsagent. ‘But we won’t be able to talk about the floods forever. Maybe I’ll start going to the corner shop two minutes further down the road.’

Later on in the day, a delivery driver was dropping off a package of stationery and muttered, ‘Alright?’ to Roberts as he passed his desk. ‘I thought he was genuinely interested to see if I was alright or not. I told him that I didn’t think I would ever get over the death of my mother two years ago and that also I was harbouring some dark thoughts about self harm but I thought I could control them for the time being without medication. He just walked off as well, having called me a weirdo.’

Roberts’ boss Fred Harper commented, ‘I think Jack has just taken people too literally when they have given him a cursory word in passing. No-one really actually cares how other people are, it is just a standard greeting. We have offered Jack some training to help him to interact more normally in future.’

Psychoanalyst Dr Karen Greber has studied human interaction for her entire career and is particularly interested in workplace dynamics. ‘Jack Roberts is a typical needy man,’ said Dr Greber, ‘but his faith in human nature is misplaced. Essentially we are all automatons just grinding through our daily lives so we can head home to even more drudgery followed by sleep riddled with nightmarish thoughts, only to wake up even more tired and slightly less optimistic than the day before.’

Roberts is philosophical about his experiences, ‘I think that there are some people who are good and who want to engage with others in the workplace. For instance Gary who is the sales director, he really likes me and always has a nice word to say, especially when I bring him a coffee or bagel back from the shops at lunchtime. I know that he’d talk to me anyway, it’s just that I was going that way and it isn’t any trouble for me.’