Isn’t this practice rather immature?
Example: I am working a temporary job giving people surveys on the Metrolink trains. Today, a man getting off the train handed me a flyer advertising a book he wrote. Looking at the flyer, it was not immediately apparent what it was because it was rather wordy and had several seemingly un-related pictures. I ask “What’s this?” and he says “A survey!” and laughs (I had just been the one passing out surveys so he thought this was funny). But it just confused me, since it was obviously not a survey and I really had no idea what the hell it was. I gave it more time than I should have to figure out what it really was, but it didn’t make me very interested in his book, which I thought was the goal of self-promotion.
And then another guy who I was working with kept (constantly) saying “Good morning!” enthusiastically to people getting on the night train. Nobody thought it was very funny and pretty much everyone corrected him, but he just kept saying it thinking it was (funny that is, he knew it wasn’t morning).
I hate feeling confused. But I tend to trust people enough to go along with the energy of what they are saying until it registers and I realize they are spewing bullshit from their mouth (this takes a couple seconds, but responding to their energy is an instantaneous thing. So in those couple of seconds I just feel confused). At least, I’ll give that benefit of the doubt to people I don’t know - once I get to know them and expect this sort of crap I am much less likely to give them the time of day at all. But anyway, why do they do it? Is there some sort of disease that causes this behavior or is it just a general failure to grow up?
