I never really did it when I was younger, but as i've gotten older i've started just talking to random people I see regularly around the neighbourhood or on my bus commute to work and honestly you end up meeting some pretty varied and interesting people. I've ended up becoming acquaintances with a ton of random people, many of which are people I would never end up associating with under other circumstances. I've had some really great conversations, heard some really cool, some really strange and some really heartbreaking stories.
Sometimes I meet these people once and never see them again, sometimes i'll see them regularly for a while but then they vanish and I never see them again or in those odd cases they end up becoming friends.
The article touched on it a bit, but it has been hard not being able to talk to random people lately with this lockdown and all. It's amazing the kind of people you can just meet randomly in your day.
Downvote feedback welcome. I did not expect people to downvote this. At worst, I expected people to see this comment as neutral. I'm fine with losing points, I am simply curious as to what goes through people their minds when they downvote it.
My perspective:
This comment does not seem to break HN guidelines. Here is the contribution of the comment:
- Assuming that making smalltalk to strangers is a good thing (parent's showcase), then what's more important is doing it. It doesn't matter how you're inspired to do it.
- Perhaps read the Luck Factor
- Traffic lights are programmed in C (in my part of the world)
If the downvote comes from that it doesn't add enough. Fair enough. If it's rather something else (tone, some form of negative emotion, civility or anything like that), I'd be curious to know how it affects people.
If no one gives feedback after me asking explicitly, I get it.
1) sometimes comments get downvoted for no apparent reason, in which they usually get upvoted again later.
2) many HN users downvote comments that talk about being downvoted, as it is against the rules (and can come across as needy/whiny).
3. while it can feel bad to see your comments turn grey, it's probably not healthy to let it affect your feelings (much).
I've often wondered by sometimes perfectly reasonable comments are downloaded, and I suspect it's 1) because people just don't like the commenter because of other comments, 2) mis-clicks, 3) bots that randomly vote to appear like real users.
FWIW, I upvoted your original comment and downvoted this one because of 2.
I've come to the conclusion weird downvotes are just a short, mostly emotion driven decisions. Sort of a "Too complicated, did not understand, seems bad - downvotes".
Every social website suffers from it.
TBH, I would like to hear it from someone who does it, because I don't think my explanation quite covers it...
I, for example, never downvote unless it's obviously completely wrong or extremely offensive (and intended to be so).
I tend to assume that with no accompanying response on an otherwise uninflammatory post, a downvote is just a 'disagree' from one of the minority that use them that way. (Of course sometimes it just means I said something inflammatory, but usually it's pretty clear if I have.)
Thanks for the feedback mercer, taneq and jotm (at the time of writing). I really appreciate it. There were a couple of things there that I hadn't considered.
This strikes home. I too noticed in public, I talked only with people I was comfortable with. Chatted up folks who looked like me, acted like me.
I am changing. I talk weather with the next person in line regardless of their culture (if they're receptive). Make eye contact with everyone. Smile and nod even if there's no time to talk. Notice people's kids and make faces at babies.
So far, very good responses. Some new friends, the proprietor of the diner I frequent, the waitstaff there, some distant neighbors who frequent my gas station. Random senior woman who was looking at the hole where the old dance hall used to be (construction downtown). Craig, the homeless guy who lives under a bridge and asks for change on the mall. He has told me some very interesting stories about life on the road!
Some folks are stunned when I 'see' them. People from different cultures are accustomed to being invisible. I try to be respectful of this too, brief comment, the weather, wish them a good day.
i applaud your effort to break out of your bubble, and to that end, make these observations:
"regardless of their culture" -> that's othering. you could substitute "regarless of our cultural differences" and be less confrontational in that regard.
"Some folks are stunned when I 'see' them. People from different cultures are accustomed to being invisible." -> why you, and again, why is it your culture vs. theirs? why would they be invisible and not you? culture is shared, and the effects of your (new) actions is to create that shared culture. perceiving 'other' cultures this way is antagonistic. other people feel that, even if they are otherwise polite and welcoming.
Because I am the mainstream culture, they are the ones who are accustomed to being invisible. I am anything but invisible - 6'4" 230lbs white male - everybody sees me come into the room.
And yes folks from other countries recently arrived are correctly described as having 'a different culture'. Else the word 'culture' loses all meaning.
I'm sympathetic to efforts to diminish 'them' vs 'us. But the topic here is exactly that, and its appropriate to call it out.
you're certainly welcome to take that stance, but it will hinder positive change, as other people catch on to the undercurrent of difference and superiority.
you may also want to ask a bunch of immigrants and "others" about whether they feel invisible before projecting.
our brains are biased toward remembering the unique, not the common. that's why people focus on differences incessantly, not commonalities. white men are ~1/3 of the US population.
Its obvious they do feel invisible. Firstly, its well documented (books, movies, studies). They respond as if startled, sometimes stammer and have trouble responding. As opposed to other folks who respond fluidly, as if social contact is not unexpected.
I'm not opposed to anything you say. But the conversation can't be had without saying this stuff out loud. And hindering conversation is an order of magnitude larger problem, than pedantry about terminology.
agreed that hindering conversations is counter-productive. hopefully that wasn't the received intent.
here are my observations living in a diverse neighborhood: white folks, black folks, east asians, mexicans, central americans, south asians, pacific islanders, etc. the black folks observably feel hyper-scrutinized. east/south asians tend to be reserved. mexicans and central americans are congenial, though sometimes guarded because of language/immigration issues. in nearly all cases i can think of, no one feels invisible, but rather visibly, palpably different, like a spotlight is shining on them everywhere they go. they're sometimes nervous because they're trying so hard to fit in, not because they feel invisible.
I could be interpreting it wrong - folks are nervous because they generally don't have favorable conversations with 6'4" white guys. I used the 'invisible' label because its how some folks, notably older women, describe how they feel. But that's a reach and I apologize if I got it wrong.
yes, certainly older women feel more invisible on average across all cultures. and it's totally possible that many of the people you meet do feel invisible; i was only suggesting not to presume it, given the diversity of experiences.
I feel like a lot of this comes with "just being nice to people" which makes everyone feel nice, and makes a community feel good. So long as one isn't that... weird... guy who talks Way Too Much, it seems like a great thing for everyone.
I've been trying to do this myself for a while, and now it almost comes natural? Even just a "hey there!" or "hello!" gets a nice response. Sometimes you end up chatting, often not, but oh well... At least it's not just ignoring each other in silence, eh?
Still have to read the article, I set it aside to read it later. But your comment first really resonates with me.
I have the same experience (age? ;-) and actually organized many events in the past years for random people to meet in person. Because of the virus that had to stop, so then I started building a platform to do the same online.
In a podcast episode entitled "The Science of Happiness" on Sam Harris' Making Sense, the guest (a researcher in happiness and well-being) argues that we feel happier in our lives the more of these passing conversations we engage in. Definitely a skill worth investing in!
During Covid, I have found people have been open to getting coffee virtually and from 8:30 am - 9 am. It’s been a low commitment way to get to know someone better that doesn’t encroach their work day... Frankly it’s less intimidating/commitment than pre covid physically meeting at a coffee shop before work. As such, in some ways I’m engaging more with some folks than before covid.
I have mixed feelings about this bit: “people who were asked to ‘personalize’ a transaction at a coffee shop by smiling, making eye contact, and having a genuine social interaction with their barista felt about 17% happier and more socially connected.”
So the customer might feel better, but what about the barista? I think that a lot of customer-service personnel want to remain as much in their own headspace as possible while they are forced to stand there dealing with strangers just to pay their bills, and so this behaviour would be imposing on them. Also, for female baristas, customers flirting with them are one of their biggest complaints, and it is all too easy for any social interaction to be misinterpreted as flirting. So, unless you have observed the barista before to see that they genuinely like interacting with customers, I think one only risks being rude by making eye contact and trying to exchange some small conversation outside of simply conveying one’s order.
> I think that a lot of customer-service personnel want to remain as much in their own headspace as possible while they are forced to stand there dealing with strangers just to pay their bills, and so this behaviour would be imposing on them.
I can only speak to my own experiences in food service, but if everyone thought this way, it would make for a very dull shift imo. quick conversations with customers really helped pass the time for me. particularly entertaining customers would often find extra food in their bag ;)
keep in mind there's a lot of low-wage work out there. some people are desperate and have to take the first position they can get, but a lot of people in directly customer facing roles have chosen that for a reason. they probably could have worked in the kitchen or restocked shelves in a grocery store if they really didn't want to talk to people.
timing and context is important of course. if the line behind you is twenty people deep, it's a bad time to chat. if the place is empty and the person is doing low-priority busywork, they might love to shoot the shit for a few minutes.
> Also, for female baristas, customers flirting with them are one of their biggest complaints, and it is all too easy for any social interaction to be misinterpreted as flirting.
first half of this is true, but you're taking it to a bit of an extreme. flirting with someone who's paid to be nice to you is almost always a bad idea, but an innocent conversation is no big deal.
> I think one only risks being rude by making eye contact and trying to exchange some small conversation outside of simply conveying one’s order
Ok, so dehumanizing is the polite thing to do. Got it.
In seriousness, that is a customer facing profession, and you don't need to enjoy people, but you sure do need to be able to act like you do. And most people would consider a warm, personal interaction the ideal. If it makes a barista uncomfortable, it's probably more likely because it highlights how rude every other customer is.
I think there's a difference between someone who is a regular vs. someone who is just walking in off the street. Every job can get monotonous, so it's nice to see a friendly familiar face and exchange pleasantries.
The key here is recognizing that this is what I like to call a "low-stakes friendship" -- it's closer to the kind of relationship you'd have with a co-worker or a client versus a friend. If you have healthy boundaries, you wouldn't pry too much into a co-worker's life. I'd even say it might be ok to politely ask out a barista you're friendly with on a date, but if they say no drop it and don't ask again.
I think if your customer representative doesn't want to connect with the customer, you should fire them and get a new one.
Contrary to whatever business model motivated that comment, the entire point of the business is to encourage customers to return. Its not the private living room of the barrista where they share their weekend with the counter staff while ignoring the line, the tables needing bussing, the overflowing trash.
The personnel are to attend to the business 100% of the time they are being paid to do so. That includes chatting up the customers, deflecting flirting, asking about preferences and generally making the customer feel at home.
Don't like all that? Get a job hauling trash or digging ditches.
Your response is a curious one, inasmuch as my comment was attempting to show some sympathy for the workers that one interacts with during the day, while your concern apparently is the business’s owners and whether they are extracting maximum value out of their business, the feelings of working-class people be damned. Also, nowhere in my comment was it suggested that customer-service staff can freely “ignore the line, the tables needing bussing, the overflowing trash”. I just personally hope they would at least be free to think their own thoughts while they are doing all that. Customer-service staff are human beings, not automatons.
Just venting. The idea that the business should be set up to convenience the counter staff, is where it went off the rails. That's what I mean to criticize, perhaps with hyperbole.
But be honest, we've all been to the shop where the staff seems to think they're in their own kitchen, chatting up their mates and whoa! somebody wants me to sell them a coffee??
I grew up on a farm. We worked. It wasn't intended to be entertaining, or self-fulfilling, or respectful of the personal choices of the worker. It was pitching hay, spreading manure.
The idea that kind of work is 'wrong' and workers are supposed instead to be supported in a congenial frame of mind with their personal space respected and only kind, polite people to interact with, is a pretty hipster notion. You take the money, you better deliver the performance required.
Seriously? This attitude is what's driving the mental health crisis in this country. People are social animals, not slaves to our jobs. The workplaces that make room for their employees to be people are the ones with low turnover and a more consistent customer experience.
If you want a robot, go out and build a robot. But don't be surprised when your customers go somewhere else a little bit more welcoming.
Hard work? Doing a job even if the customer is not somebody you like? The root of mental health crisis in this country? Geeze.
Pretty soft life, that, if you can get it. But there're lots of jobs require you to sweat, mentally or physically. Nothing wrong with that. People can survive a shift, without total mental breakdown.
I'm generally supportive of so-called 'Millennials' because people are people, the young are not the soft fragile children people like to make them out to be.
Then somebody posts something like that comment, and I can see how the stereotype got made.
Right. And a right attitude toward work is critical.
If there's any mental health issue, it stems from the cognitive dissonance of believing a counter job should be like chatting with your friends and hanging out with cool people. Instead of dealing with a sometimes-difficult public for the purpose of moving coffee (or whatever). Understand what you're doing, and doing it right, can be very satisfying.
The "right" attitude? Why is your attitude necessarily the right one?
HN is an anomaly in my experience; people outside the tech world mostly hate their jobs and put in juuuust enough effort to not get fired.
Millennials (and younger) have largely abandoned capitalism. The only way to win a game that's stacked against you is to not play. Shit's gonna get real weird in the next couple decades.
Being paid to move coffee, to coffee-deprived people, is where we started. Taking the money and not doing that, is something like fraud.
Make all the meta-argument you like (Capitalism! Stacked!) That's substantially moving the goalposts. Feel free to have that conversation, but its a big left-turn from where we started here.
As an introvert who has spent the past couple of years actively working on this, I agree with the article. We are social mammals, we are supposed to have conversations with other people. Even before we were sheltering in place, a lot of people got in their cars, drove to an office where they might talk to other people but not really have conversations (why the proverbial water cooler is actually important), get back in their cars, come home, not really have much connection with people at home, then consume a one-way stream of content, and repeat. That's not a good way to live.
I can still remember wonderful conversations I had with strangers decades ago, and with casual acquaintances I've revived over the past couple of years. Highly recommend.
In the last couple of years I've thought a lot that I'm really happy that I changed schools after ninth grade and also repeated class in high school. I'm not too outgoing person, but because of these things I have so broad connection basis with people who I know on name basis. And this helps, whenever I need to do business or just encounters, it is so much easier when you know the person ten years already by name.
I would say this repeating class was highly positive for me, and way more impactful than grades ever were in the long term.
I used have a lot of friends and some 4000 people I've on Skype who I've met at various events.
After that I went MIA, the thing is when you know so many people - a lot of people try to extract value from you. I never needed help of any of these people in my life, I am usually self driven and the way I get people interested in what I want their help in is through showing them money and them analysing if is worth their time.
Beyond that I've stopped trading favours and now everything is transactional for me.
I feel ambivalent about the conclusion. Small talk is nice I guess, but depending on your personality you might be more invested than the other people. I've had numerous acquaintances basically just ghost me over the past 30 years. These were people I knew for lengths of half a decade+
That's life, I can't blame them, but it really starts to hurt the more it happens. I find myself more cautious and conservative about who I invest time with now. Having everything be so transactional seems like institutionalized sociopathy sometimes.
Sometimes I meet these people once and never see them again, sometimes i'll see them regularly for a while but then they vanish and I never see them again or in those odd cases they end up becoming friends.
The article touched on it a bit, but it has been hard not being able to talk to random people lately with this lockdown and all. It's amazing the kind of people you can just meet randomly in your day.