Also, in self-checkout at grocery stores, I can bag stuff myself and (A) not throw heavy stuff on top of squishy stuff, and (B) also not use nearly as many plastic bags as the cashiers are instructed to. A gallon jug of milk needs zero bags, not two. 
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I sometimes have to use my resting bitch face in the self-checkout line when the people in front of me can’t seem to figure out how it works - in spite of the “lower life forms can do this” instructions.
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I’m with you, but I also respect the position of “I don’t feel like small talk right now, I just need to buy this gallon of milk and go home thanks.”
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Yes it is. So thankfully there is hope after all for those who suffer from this tragic condition.
Consider, alternately, that the service industry worker just wants to get through their shift, and your small talk is making their line longer. 
I once had a customer complain to my supervisor that I was “rude” because I wasn’t smiling idiotically like a friggin’ Stepford Wife. This was in college back in the early 90’s, and of course it was a man.
@crashproof: I always seek the self-check before I seek a human interaction.
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Small talk is a two-way street. If the cashier is not interested in making small talk and neither am I, then it’s all good. Still, there’s a difference between not making small talk and acting completely aloof. I read the original statement as typical middle-class snobbery: “Please Don’t Make Me Talk to The Trader Joe’s Checkout Person” = “ugh, I’m shopping at an upper middle class store, and this wage slave who doesn’t even have a real job is trying to talk to me, like I’m its equal”.
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Yeah, but I’ve been to a couple different TJ’s where the cashier was trying really hard in a really cheery way to talk to me. It was like they’d been told to do so in order to enhance the customer’s experience (or some such corp-speak). I play along a bit because yeah, that person is just doing what they need to do to keep their job. But I’m not gonna go all that far in pretending that my customer experience really is being enhanced by forced cheery chatter.
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A quote from a novel my friend is reading: “He hate-fucked him with his eyes for 60 seconds.”
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“I am not a cock.” -Nixon
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Good on you for being self-aware enough to read body language and situationally aware enough to see the line of other customers behind you. However, you are an above average customer. I don’t go to TJ’s a whole lot, so I hadn’t noticed what @anon15383236 stated, but she may be right, and that could be what that “don’t make me talk…” bit is about. I guess that’s why they don’t have self-check lines at TJ’s, and one of the reasons I don’t go there much. (They also have a shitty little parking lot, and shitty, self-absorbed customers. These are shared reasons for why I also don’t go to WholePaycheck.)
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Or the person is clinically depressed. Please do not respond to frowns with frowns.
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A quick smile and nod is all it takes. We get it, we’re probably mostly pretending to give a fuck anyways.
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You Can Drive Slowly Just as Easily in the Far Right Lane Face
I also have a slightly frowny face and a 1000-yard stare when I’m thinking. Ever since I was a boy, it’s been “Are you mad?”
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My resting face has been described as “grave”.
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“I’m so sorry, I no speak ze English.”
“Ah! That is no problem to me, I also speak French.”
“I speak no French.”
“But I just heard you –”
“I speak no French, monsieur. Good day to you.”
Thanks to The Toast. http://the-toast.net/2014/06/10/women-ignoring-men-as-art/
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Cinematic parallel –
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Disagree. By bagging a gallon of milk I can carry more bags at once up steps (because if I have 10 bags, I can carry them all at once, 5 on each hand. However if I have 9 bags and 1 jug o milk, I am making 2 trips.)
Yes, I am using more plastic than I should, and yes I reuse and recycle. They kick you out of Oregon if you don’t comply…
To remain on-topic, I said all this with my “Resting Milk Face”
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There was a cashier at my grocery store that I would actively avoid because he was always SO chatty and it slowed him down. So I’d be stuck making small talk about my goddamn broccoli forEVER because he couldn’t scan and talk, apparently. I do not need to hear 40 ways you enjoy broccoli sir please just let me buy it and go home.[quote=“karl_jones, post:34, topic:92245, full:true”]
My resting face has been described as “grave”.
[/quote]
Guys always used to come up to me in public and say “why do you look so sad?” And then argue with me when I said I wasn’t.
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I must be good at projecting “don’t talk to me vibes”. Even the barber doesn’t try to engage me in conversation more than once.
I used to get told to smile a lot when I was younger. “Cheer up, it might never happen”.
Always pissed me off (what if it did, and I wasn’t ready for it?).
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ha, my superpower is similar!
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