To turn a bit of compulsory small talk into a long, full-blown (but one-sided) conversation–nay, a veritable monologue of free associated trivia and other inanities–is not friendly. It is rude.
Gah!
I hate “friendly” people!
And he was a librarian. In a library! My one sure refuge! :mad:
I hate them even if they are being friendly to someone else.
Hey people who’ve never met sitting on the plane behind me. You don’t need to have a loud, pointless conversation with each other for the whole damn flight. It’s OK if you remain strangers. At least use your someone-may-be-trying-to-sleep-within-three-feet-of-me voice.
This happened to me when I was checking out at a Walgreen’s store. The woman must have been really lonely, or compulsive or something, because she practically gave me her life story. It was just awkward.
Ha! his happens quite a bit in the South. Asking someone “How ya doin’?” can be dangerous.
I love it, but I can see how some people might be shell-shocked by it.
Yeah, I’ll speak up in favour of it. I makes me happy to see that there are people out there willing to talk to strangers and maybe even to get to know them a little.
Now, Frylock’s situation is somewhat different. A conversation is one thing. Just talking at someone is another.
I don’t mind being invited into that kind of conversation. That I usually politely beg off doesn’t mean I think they shouldn’t have invited me.
What I’m talking about is when the person persists in trying to have a conversation with me after I have indicated I don’t want to, by showing no inclination to participate substantially in the conversation. (Especially if the conversation is an inane, trivial one.)
“Mm-hmm” and “huh” are not indications that I want to keep talking to you. Some people seem to think otherwise though, much to my chagrin.
With this librarian, here’s what I did. After about 10 minutes (I kid you not) of him talking about nothing important while I was trying to read an article in a journal online, I finally turned to directly face him. I had been saying “huh” and “mm-hmm” while not making any more direct social contact, in hopes that he’d understand a conversation wasn’t happening here. But he hadn’t got the message. So I turned directly to face him, looking him in the eyes as I continued to say “hmm” and “mm-hmm” and so on whenever he paused.
Which was kind of a jerk move I guess, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the directly confrontational thing and actually ask him to stop talking to me.
After another couple of minutes, he either ran out of steam or finally got the message, I couldn’t tell which.
What was it he was trying to talk to me about? It started with how I’d need to yield the computer if someone wanted to use it as a card catalog. That’s fair enough. Then he free-associated to how he think’s it’s a stupid rule. (Why? It seems like a perfectly servicable rule to me, though I didn’t tell him so because I was busy.) Then he free-associated to how he thinks there should be more computers on the floor. Then he told me how that might add too much weight. (Me —> !!!) Then he told me about how they’d have to move shelves around. Then he told me about how heavy shelves are. Then he told me some people don’t realize how much work it is to move books around. Then he told me about how you think books are pretty light, but they add up. If you add up the weight of all the books on the floor, it turns out to be pretty heavy. Then he told me about how people often complained that the library wouldn’t stay open later. (No idea what the connection of ideas was here.) At this point I stopped listening altogether.
The conversation I just recounted makes me think I’ve made the guy look like he may be mentally disabled or something. So to clarify: His office is the big one in the corner. I don’t know what he is exactly, but he’s some kind of management I think. Anyway, he’s got an office.
So, he’s just annoying.
He may lead a perfectly fulfilling and wonderful life, but when he interacts with me, he’s annoying.
If one person dominates the talking it’s not a conversation, so few understand this.
I have a few people on my bus route to work who do this. Man it’s annoying. I’m just trying to catch a bus people. I don’t want to hear about your work problems, or what wrong with this city, or whatever. They’ll go a mile a minute, and I think the only reason they don’t notice you’re only responding with mm-hm, uh-huh, etc. is because you couldn’t get in a longer reply anyway. They’re practically talking to themselves, but it would be rude to say so. I have to take the same bus everyday, and don’t want to start skipping busses just to avoid some people, just because they won’t shut up.
Luckily, on the bus, I let them get on first, and then sit way far away. Then it’s time to whip out the book so no one on the bus gets the same idea.
I’m glad that works for you. 
In my own experience, people often don’t understand that reading a book is doing something. They’ll often explicitly call my act of reading a book “not doing anything.” :rolleyes:
I just remembered an incident from High School. It was actually my friend who was talking too much this time, though not to me. He describes it as a learning experience. As he recounts it, he was waiting for a taxi or something like that, and was sitting on some steps. Nearby was (as he described her) a “big black lady,” and he started trying to converse with her. As he recounts it, he went through the whole round of silly small-talk stuff trying to get more out of her than a grunt. Somehow, he felt compelled to keep trying to talk to her, feeling as though sitting there in silence would be unfriendly. (This was a mystery to me then as it is a mystery to me now, but he does come from a line of cow-folk so maybe there’s some kind of Southern thing going in here.)
Finally the lady’s taxi came, not his. And she got up, and as she did so, she said (without looking at him), “Man. You just about talked my ear off.”
The funny thing about this is, it didn’t come across as particularly unfriendly. Just as though she was reporting a fact he might be interested in knowing.
But the clincher was this. As she was walking down the steps and toward the taxi, she called out, again without turning to face him, “And you ugly too!”
Then she got in the taxi and left.
He reports he now thinks twice about trying to start conversations without a clear purpose.
This is the main reason I have headphones.
When I make eye contact with somebody (not in need of directions, physical help or medical assistance) who just looks…well, bored or crazy, I start to fiddle with my MP3 player and make obvious oblivious expressions.
Just leave me the hell alone, eh? I have friends. They bring enough drama into my life without strangers doing it as well.
There is a woman at my work that does this. I swear, whenever a customer gives out a friendly “how you doin’?”, she will go on a ten-minute diatribe about all the wonderful and amazing things her three kids do. And let’s not even get into last week, when things were winding down, and we were all just sitting in a corner waiting for the last few customers to leave. She stood there at the counter and talked. And talked and talked. For *40 minutes. * Any reasonable person would have been able to see that no one cared about the mundane details of her life and that she could shut up any time, and yet she. wouldn’t. stop. Woman, it will not kill you to be silent for a little while. Seriously. Stop talking.
How about when there’s a queue of 12 people waiting to be served by the chatty one, and you’re the 12th? Still happy?
This is the case with the administrative assistant to two managers with offices on my hall. We all avoid her office like the plague as she uses any face-to-face contact as an excuse to riff endlessly on about the first thing that comes into her head.
Yesterday I was right in the middle of a talk with a teammate that didn’t warrant a closed door, but was pretty serious. She waltzed right in and started regaling us with a tale of seeing young kids betting for money at the drag races last weekend. A somewhat amusing and interesting topic, but not exactly the appropriate time to bring it up. It’s the first time she’s done that to me (I moved to an office on this hall somewhat recently) and I’m hoping she doesn’t make a habit of it. It doesn’t help that the two women on this hall who did put up with her chattiness got laid off at the same time the other month, so she’s undoubtedly seeking a new audience.
The cashier at the grocery store on Sunday asked me about almost every item I was buying. She asked me what I was making for dinner. I had chicken and broccoli – “Makin’ a stir-fry?” I was getting some cottage cheese, and she asked me if I liked that brand. I got some Dr Pepper, and she asked me if I’d ever put lemon it, 'cause it’s real good that way.
Damn good thing I wasn’t buying Kotex.
No, you’re right. That’s another situation where I’d think it was frustrating. Heck, I feel bad even if I’m #1 in the lineup. I guess the situation I was imagining was the “two people at a bus stop” or “two people in the doctor’s waiting room” sort of situation.
Well? Were you making stir fry?
I’ve learned that there is a specific correct answer to the question “How are you?”
It is: “Reasonably well, thank you.” Nothing more need be said, if you’re not in the mood for chat.
My idea of hell is an eternal coach flight next to someone who wants to chat.
I’d be practicing my Bullseye-style peanut rebounds.
Funny thing is, I'm a librarian, and I get this all the time.
One thing about reference duty, is that I have to stay in the vicinity of the reference desk. That means that if someone wants to chat me up, I really can’t leave. Sure I can get up and read shelves, or immerse myself in whatever else I am doing, it often proves little good. Once you get a chatter, the only way to get rid of them is to have someone in another department call you one the phone and pretend you have to suddenly go into a part of the library where they can’t follow.
The worst are the ones who are library security guards. We had one girl who on her first day insisted on telling me that, she was a lesbian, all about her girlfriend, all about her abusive father, about every single car she had ever owned... thankfully she didn't last long.