March Madness fatigue: Why some office workers hate ‘sportsball’

March Madness is well underway, but for a lot of people, it’s just another day at the office. That is, until you walk into the break room or sign into Slack and realize the place is abuzz with bracket chatter and Final Four predictions.  You sigh, resigned to yet another month of sportsball—a whole lot of chatter about a game that you don’t know about. And don’t really care to. For many people, March Madness is a nearly month-long ritual that requires a lot of feigning interest or noise-cancelling headphones. For every excited person replaying Yaxel Lendeborg’s latest opponent-crushing dunk is a disinterested coworker nearby, confused at best, or at worst, sensing cliques forming in the workplace that they’re not a part of. Tolerance for in-office forced fun is at an all-time low, and some managers might bemoan the distraction March Madness causes: coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently put out data that suggests employers lose $12 billion a year as workers watch