Some bozos I used to work with would go to Lowe’s on their lunch hour, walk up to strange women and offer unsolicited advice. I told them, if you really must be a blatant pig, ASK THEM for help.
They were outed when they tried it on a woman who was there with another co-worker.
I might go on a date with someone I fell to talking to in the grocery store. Probably not if it was the first (and only) thing out of his mouth.
A big difference is that when I am in the store, I am probably not going to get raped. If things start feeling threatening, at the very worst I am going to the store manager and ask him if I can stay in an office or something while I wait for the police. But it’s not going to come to that, because people rarely act super skeevy in stores-- at least, I’ve never experienced that.
When I am walking down the street, I can be followed and probably quite easily assaulted. I do not feel confident that I will have a safe place to escape or wait for help if I feel threatened. And based on lots of experience, I know that people do act super skeevy on the street. I’ve been followed, subject to ongoing harassment, threatened and had men expose themselves to me on the street before. I do not feel safe when I the object of attention on the street.
You have to understand, a certain percentage of men react to rejection with harassment and threats. This is a day to day reality for women. So when we are approached in a place where we have few ways to protect ourselves, it’s not a comfortable thing for us.
Sure-coffee’s harmless. I wouldn’t go anywhere alone with him for several more dates, though.
Assuming that the guy seems like a decent person and at least somewhat interesting, I’d say yes. Why not go for coffee? That sounds pretty low-risk to me.
I wouldn’t have them pick me up at my place, or something, but I’d be happy to meet with them in public.
How do you know the guy isn’t hitting on women every other aisle? Maybe he goes shopping often just to do it. The guy on the street could also just going about his life (say on the way to a store) and stumbles across someone he’s found attractive so he does something he doesn’t normally do.
In the absence of at least non-verbal shows of interest before the approach, it’s all cold calling IMO. The cold calls are just packaged differently. Cold calling by the way works often enough to be worth the effort or the literal cold callers wouldn’t do it. I am not surprised so far the poll is running at only 55% no.
In a contained environment, I think that’d be pretty obvious fairly quickly. Just my take, having observed such behavior…
I don’t enjoy being alone with people I don’t know. It’s just how I am. I’m pretty much a loner anyway. It was years between my divorce and my next date and that was with someone I’d worked with for several months.