"So, how was your weekend?"

"How was your weekend? Get up to much?”

Unless you work from home, the chances are you’ll have asked your colleagues this question at least 10 times so far today.

What you probably won’t have done is think of a single follow-up question when they reply with “nothing much, had a fairly quiet one.”

As a recent survey by the Institute of Irrelevance at Manchester Metropolitan University revealed, 86% of workplace conversations on a Monday morning end with one of the participants faking a seizure because they can’t think of anything to say.

To address this crisis, the Ugly Truth has come up with 7 questions guaranteed to keep a conversation flowing.

1. Did you get caught up in that accident?

This question should be a staple of all Monday morning office conversations. Its primary advantage is that it gives your colleagues the impression that you take at least a passing interest in their day-to-day routine, and perhaps even their wellbeing.

Their most likely response is “No, where was that?” This will give you a chance to weave a tale of overturned cars, flashing sirens and five-mile tailbacks. Be prepared for curveballs like, “No, I walk into work so luckily I never get caught up in traffic.” This is where you have to use your imagination. Claim that the accident involved a pedestrian being thrown 50 feet in the air by an exploding pavement, or a large piece of falling scaffolding squashing an entire primary school majorette troupe.

2. What did you think of the sports?

A great question to ask if the colleague you’re addressing is a sporty type. These days, there are over three different types of sport, ranging from football to American football – and many sporting events take place on weekends, so the chances are there’ll be some sport for them to comment on.

If your luck’s out, they might reply with “What sports?” In this scenario, respond by pretending you actually said “What did you think of the sprouts?” in order to start an even more rewarding conversation about vegetables.

3. Sad about that celebrity, wasn’t it?

2016 will forever be remembered as the year that 37% of all celebrities died. But even today, famous people are dying left, right and centre, so this question is a fairly safe bet. If your colleague replies that they hadn’t heard the news, and enquires whose death you were referring to, reply with: “The nice one with the kind eyes,” and then slowly walk away, gently shaking your head and muttering a barely audible “so sad”. 

4. Are you going to the big meeting later?

This teaser will not only fill your colleague with dread, but more importantly, it will likely generate a counter-question along the lines of, “No, was there an email about it?” This will give you all the ammunition you need to eke out a further two minutes of chat. 

Possible follow-up lines could include: “Yeah, apparently they’re going to reveal who’s been leaving the milk out and make them do a Game of Thrones walk of shame through the office” OR “I’m only joking, there is no big meeting later. It was this morning and you missed it, so if you want the exact details of your redundancy, you’d best go and speak to HR.”

5. Would you rather eat strawberry-flavoured poo, or poo-flavoured strawberries?

Keep this one up your sleeve for the office philosophers. If you ever overhear a colleague saying anything along the lines of: “If I was stuck on a desert island…” or “If I won the lottery…”, you’ve stumbled upon the kind of dreamer who’ll appreciate this line of questioning. Other variants could include “would you rather be stuck in a lift with a flatulent dog, or an entire Ed Sheeran album?”

6. Did you hear something?

Technically, this question is less designed to keep a conversation flowing and more of a device to stop it in its tracks. If you’re in the kitchen, pretend you’ve heard a sound coming from the direction of the fridge, microwave, or any other appliance that’s at least a few yards away. After walking over to the appliance to investigate, say that you must have imagined the sound, and carry on back to your desk.

7. Have you always had that mole?

Again, this question is something of a last resort, for those occasions where you really don’t want a conversation to develop any further. When your colleague replies with ‘what mole?’, you should gesture that the mark in question is on the back of their neck.

The advantage of this approach is that your colleague will almost certainly retreat to the toilets to check it out. And, because the imaginary mark they’re looking for is on their neck, they’ll struggle to get a proper look until they get home and use a second mirror. Should they bring up the issue tomorrow after discovering there is no mole, simply say that they misheard, and that what you actually said was “Has that necklace always been there?”

DISCLAIMER: Asking any question of anybody carries an inherent degree of risk. The Ugly Truth accepts no responsibility for the loss of employment and social standing that may result from asking any of the questions published above. 

Animal crisis shuts down social media

All social media has been suspended for the day because animals aren't being funny. 

Dogs are efficiently getting from A to B without stopping to chase their tails, cats are refraining from fighting their reflections and rabbits are staying in their hutches, being generally dull as fuck.

Today is believed to be the first day since May 13, 2007, that not a single animal has done anything worthy of going viral. On that occasion, the whole of the internet was shut down for nearly 24 hours, until a 13-second clip finally emerged of a gibbon attacking Noel Edmonds with a sword. 

People whose lives revolve around this kind of thing have spoken of their frustration.

Ricky Gomez, a 23-year-old trainee barista who typically shares a dozen videos a day of animals being ‘wacky’, said: "I've been sat in a field filming a horse for the last seven hours. It's neighed a few times and scratched its mane against a fence post, but that is literally it.

“The battery on my phone’s about to die so if it doesn’t pull a face that looks a bit like Donald Trump in the next few minutes, I’ve basically wasted my day.”

Earlier this afternoon, rumours emerged of a video of a kitten playing with a yoyo. However, relief turned to despair when it was discovered the footage actually showed a kitten being hit by a train.

Today’s social media crisis has been exacerbated by the failure of any celebrities to make easily meme-able gaffes.

Donald Trump is understood to have forgotten his Twitter password, while Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Piers Morgan, Nigel Farage, Theresa May, Harry Styles, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gordon Ramsay and Ryan Reynolds are all believed to be working together on the same jigsaw puzzle.

SOLVED: The mystery of why film baddies can't shoot

It's a puzzle that's exercised the minds of ballistics experts for decades – Why can't film baddies shoot?

Now, a major new study claims to have identified the answer: Stormtroopers, Bond henchmen and other movie villains are so traumatised by their torrid working conditions they lack the motivation to aim properly.

Professor Clinton Swayne, a lecturer in ballistics at the University of Michigan, said: "Wherever you look in movie history, you’ll find baddies with otherwise impeccable motor skills firing shots harmlessly wide of goodies, while goodies are able to dispatch their enemies with a single shot. 

“The goodies and baddies generally look the same, walk the same and talk the same. The only difference is that when Chuck Norris pulls a trigger, 50 terrorists fall to the ground, but a baddy can fire off a hundred rounds without making a goody so much as spill his coffee."

Prof Swayne now claims to have pinpointed the reason why, after leading a team of researchers who have spent 11 years poring over millions of hours of film footage – and tracking down some of the film baddies with the worst ‘shots fired to goodies hit’ ratios.

“We found a whole host of complex reasons why baddies are terrible at shooting guns. Often, they haven’t received adequate firearms training. Other times, they are facing psychological pressures that you and I would know little about.

“We spoke to lots of Stormtroopers, for instance, who described how they were forced to wear their cumbersome white suits all day and night, even when they were sleeping. One said they felt so miserable they didn’t really care if they shot Chewbacca or not.”

An Albanian sex trafficker from the Taken franchise, meanwhile, described how he was told – on the eve of a crucial shootout with no-nonsense CIA operative Bryan Mills – that he wouldn't be getting a pre-agreed bonus even if he successfully gunned down Mills.

"It was a massive blow to my emotional wellbeing, especially as I was on the minimum wage at the time," said the trafficker, who wished to remain anonymous.

"I had no reason to bother trying to kill this guy if I wasn't being rewarded for my labour, so I didn't even try. There's one scene in Taken 2 where you can clearly see me aiming at at a billboard for Findus Crispy Pancakes that's about 10 yards above Mills' head."

Anecdotes such as this back up one of the study's key findings, which is that 41% of villains believe a lack of motivation is the biggest single reason for their failure to fulfil their henchmanly duties. Inadequate training (26%) is next on the list, while nearly a fifth of baddies claim 'emotional turmoil' is the main factor affecting their ability to shoot. 

Some of the survey questions are published below. The full research paper will be published at the premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi later this year.

“Carrying out this research was an exhausting process, as it involved watching literally every second of every film ever made," says Prof Swayne.

“Some of our guys were pleading with me to cut a few corners by skipping films that were unlikely to have any gunfire in them.

“But I was adamant that in order for this research to be credible, we couldn’t miss a single minute of cinema, and if that meant watching Marley and Me in case there was a bloody shout-out we’d all forgotten about, so be it.”

Some of cinema’s leading villains have welcomed Prof Swayne’s research.

A representative of James Bond nemesis, Scaramanga, said the study offered useful insights which could potentially increase the effectiveness of future villainy and dastardliness.  

Others have responded angrily, however. 

Abdul Rafai, a Lebanese terrorist in the 1980s Chuck Norris action thriller, The Delta Force, said: "This so-called research paints a picture that us villains are completely incompetent, when the truth is very different.

"I personally shot Captain Scott McCoy three times, right in the eye. It's just the camera angles and the selective editing that make it look like he got away unharmed."

Darth Vader, meanwhile, is said to be considering legal action over Prof Swayne’s allegations that Stormtroopers endure poor working conditions.

“Staff welfare is at the heart of all we do aboard the Death Star," said a Galactic Empire spokesman. "Lord Vader emphatically rejects the assertion that any of our employees were in any way mistreated during our numerous failed campaigns to obliterate Mark Hamill.”