Eye contact. It can be used to convey messages, or simply to express “yes, I am listening.”
I’ve been encountering so many idiots that I’ve got to wonder “is it me?” Am I the problem? Am I not doing enough with my verbal or non-verbal communication to actually relay things to people?
The other day some weirdo came into my office soliciting some shit. I have no idea what though, since I couldn’t understand what he was saying with his thick accent. Because of my desk, I couldn’t really see him from the knees down, and someone I work with was passing through the hall and saw me talking to this guy. She informed me later that she had to stop herself from bursting out laughing because he was wearing these:
I get it’s cultural attire. I wouldn’t have laughed at him if I saw it. I might have been surprised, surely, being that they didn’t exactly coordinate with the rest of the suit. Elves tend to wear something a little more At least it’s not sandals. There is a large Indian population where I live and work, and they will wear sandals until the snow is falling on their toesies. I don’t know how they do it. Anyways, I was doing the polite “Thank you for stopping by, but we’re not interested.” And he was just not getting it. Just giving me this intense look and then “well we can open an account real quick.” And I’m just like Oh no. I don’t want to do that. But have a good day. Cue some more weird eye contact. Like…. “have a good day” is your dismissal. You can go now.
This morning I go to Dunkin Donuts on my way to work. The drive-thru line looks long so I figure I will go inside. Even though it’s hella cold, getting out of the car also gives me a chance to dispose of accumulated car trash as well. So I get in, and there is one lady ordering in front of me and it seems like A Hassle. Her order is finally complete and I’m up and this young guy kind of wanders away… first behind a door next to the register, then he yells something over to the other workers. He comes back to the register and after a weird pause where he’s just looking at me he goes “how can I help you?” Like ok maybe I didn’t just start blabbing my order out before you spoke because you are not giving any indication that you are at all prepared for this interaction. So I start saying what I want, and he cuts me off two words in, and begins yelling at the other workers again. So I’m like “uh ok…” out loud. And then he’s like ok what can I get you, and that repeats once more with me getting cut off so he can yell something. At this point I’m visibly annoyed, because then he starts apologizing and I’m like OK ARE YOU READY NOW??? And then I hear a manager come out and she yells at everyone to get their shit together because it’s a different problem every 5 minutes and this is Dunkin Donuts, not NASA. I laughed.
Anyways, I’m trying to have significant eye contact with people because we live in A Society, but since Trump’s been elected all forms of human normalcy are slowly eroding away so I guess this is just life now.