Does too many tabs open on your browser make you a polymath or a pain?

My colleagues laugh at me because I like to have a lot of tabs open in my browser. First, am I mistaken or is this completely normal and sensible workplace practice from me?

Second, I need some comebacks to put these smart alecs back in their box. Any ideas?

It’s common for there to be a tension between feeling a personal responsibility to confront a person on such an issue and being anxious about potential repercussionsCredit: John Shakespeare

I won’t say where I stand on the vexed and highly divisive question of whether having lots of tabs open on a browser is a good or bad thing. What I will say - and I don’t think anybody could glean my opinion from this statement - is that having lots of tabs open is unquestionably evidence of a brilliant, multiplex mind.

It points to a person capable of handling numerous challenges at once, someone who is thorough as they are creative - usually a polymath, often a polyglot. I believe that there is some early research that suggests tab-lovers are significantly more attractive, better liked and more likely to win a Nobel Prize than the general population. Keep an eye on ‘Nature’ for that one.

So, keeping my opinions completely to myself, and with no horse in this incredibly important race, I would say that not only are you right to put your smart-talking colleagues back in their box, you should also tape the box and leave only small breathing holes in the top.

Here’s my guide to bringing them down a peg, and if you feel so inclined, bringing them down full stop.

A few simple comebacks to get you started:

“If you spent more time working and less time hovering over my shoulder counting my tabs, we’d solve two problems at once: your infatuation with trivia and my sore shoulders from carrying you professionally.”

“You’re worried about tabs. I’m worried about doing work, so the organisation stays afloat. Who’s to say whose priorities are right?”

“You say the fans in my laptop are working that hard because my tabs put the system under high load. I think my computer is trying to drown out the sound of your voice - and rightly so.”

There are a few other important practices I would recommend that you make part of your work routine while interacting with these nuisance colleagues.

Whenever you’re praised for your work, remind anyone and everyone that it was produced on one of hundreds of tabs open in your browser. If there’s laughter or consternation make it clear that you couldn’t possibly have produced the same results with fewer tabs open.

Whenever sending a screenshot, always edit it so that your resplendent tab garden is showing. This is a statement of pride, and if it goads and antagonises the wiseguys at the same time, so much the better.

Don’t worry about coming across as petty or retaliatory. Seek out clutter in your detractors’ own work lives and then point it out to them, underscoring their hypocrisy. This might be on their physical desks, on their computer desktops, in their filing cabinets - anywhere except, presumably, their barren minds.

I, as you can see, remain neutral on the subject, but hope you may have found a morsel of insight within my scrupulously unbiased - and deadly earnest - analysis above.

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