I admit I have done this: when the restaurant is too noisy to have a conversation, or I am there in a large group where it’s not only too loud, but no one seems to care if I am part of the conversation or not. Other times, I have pulled it out to look up things related to the conversation. It all depends on the circumstances.
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Absolutely, so have I. When my friends are all at a restaurant together, it’s very common for someone to say “hey, when’s that movie playing?” and someone will look it up. Or “wait, who played Buck Rogers? Someone check IMDb.” Etc. But there’s been times that I’ve been at dinner and looked around to see every single person on their phone or tablet while eating, and I just want to leave.
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I’ve been with my family of origin (all the kids are adults now, and there are grandkids) and every single person is speaking, at the same time. Everyone but me. That’s not why I left, nor why I went so far away, but I do require a lot of solitude to feel like myself.
But, at least no one was on their phone.
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I’ve always had a separate work phone since getting married, and a number of years ago started getting it forwarded to my cell. What a clusterfuck it has been with people who get called back on the cell then taking that as my primary phone, even though I can’t hear that one in the workshop. The worst is when someone assumes it’s a cell and texts an important message into oblivion. It may make me an old fart, but I say texting is not a professional means of communication.
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I’d like to add to the social graces: People who don’t introduce other people in small social or professional situations. And the “I’m bad with names” excuse doesn’t fly with me. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been chatting with someone at a professional event (conference, workshop, etc.) and someone idles up to talk to the other person, who they obviously know in some fashion. Instead of saying, “Have you two/you all/you guys met?”, whereupon I have the sense to stick out my hand and say, “Hi, I’m Jilly,” thus giving the introducer a pass on the name thing, I’m left standing there like a fool until the awkward becomes unbearable and I have to initiate the introduction.
If you are the person in any small combination of people that forms the degree of connection, no matter how tangential, it is YOUR JOB as a SOCIALLY DECENT PERSON to initiate introductions.
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[quote=“Jilly, post:26, topic:98825”]
People who don’t introduce other people in small social or professional situations. And the “I’m bad with names” excuse doesn’t fly with me.[/quote]
I had to stop introducing people in such situations because around the time I turned 50 I stopped being able to process names under pressure. I could have known and worked with someone for 20 years, at the instant when I have to pull their name out of my head it is like a wall is there blocking it. I couldn’t have imagined how real this is before it started to happen. Talking to friends and relatives my age and older, this is a very common thing, so you might want to rethink your idea that it is just an excuse.
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(Hetero) guys with (hetero) eyes.
I’m pretty sure I have a facial recognition and name learning disability. I just suck at it. My dad could walk down the street and recognize someone he went to high school with 50 years earlier, I don’t recognize someone I worked with 6 months ago. The sensei of a dojo I was in some months earlier stopped me on the street, and out of context I could not recognize him at all.
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I don’t think it’s an excuse that people can’t remember names; it’s an excuse when people use it not to introduce. For example, Mr. Jilly is the worst. He’s over 50 too, and I’m very sensitive about his memory in this particular area. So, we’ve worked on strategies to deal with this.
There are ways to introduce that don’t involve names:
“Have you two met?”
"Does everyone here know one another?"
Even: “I’m sorry, I’m bad with names, but I want to make sure everyone has been introduced.”
I think not remembering names is a common occurrence, for multiple reasons: bad memory, anxiety, etc. It’s something to which most people can relate, so admitting it in a social situation can introduce (puns intended) levity and is preferable to ignoring the elephant on the table. Otherwise, the other person is left feeling as awkward as possible. I simply think it’s a social grace to make sure everyone feels comfortable if I’m the link the chain that connects two others.
I hope that clarifies.
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In my experience these lead to an expectation that the introducer will supply names when the answer is “no”.
After a couple of experiences where I damaged relationships by not being able to retrieve a name in such situations – names I knew, dammit! – I’ve decided that anyone who wants someone else to know their name has to step up and introduce themself. I was “Mr. Introducer” for many years, it isn’t my responsibility any more.
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After far too many social situations in which I either forgot someone’s name or, worse, used the wrong name – which is just about the worst social faux pas there is – the anxiety just ramps up when I’m in that sort of situation. So quite honestly I’ve just learned to avoid them entirely.
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I have to admit, this drives me a little nuts, too. But I always chalked it up to me being an old fogey.
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I get in trouble for this with my wife, she’s big on this as well, but the problem is in some circumstances it feels like it would be socially worse to interrupt whatever conversation is going on to do the intro. For example, I was seeing a cousin I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I’m paying attention to his life story and then my wife walks up and she only waited like 5 seconds before interrupting and then I got chewed out later for not introducing her. I was going to, but geez, give me a chance to wait for a natural pause.
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crowds are the thing I can’t handle. I had a panic attack at an Ikea. I bailed on a company picnic (free food + beer) because I just could not handle the mass of humanity. I can handle slightly larger groups if it’s relatively structured, but a big group of people just milling around sets off all my anxiety
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Traffic lights. It astonishes me that other people can hit every light in a row red, or be sitting at a red light with a bunch of traffic WHEN NO ONE IS GOING and not turn into a boiling pile of rage. I have a fantasy of reverse engineering the current and future states of all the lights in the city, or if the city has some kind of grid-wide monitoring system hacking into that, and being able to put into a program the place I need to go, and it would tell me the optimum time to leave so as to hit as many lights green as possible.
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as always, XKCD has you covered
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Then you’d love the UK where it’s all roundabouts. Some of them are quite terrifying even after you get used to them going the wrong way! Lights are the least of the hazards of driving here in NJ, I literally can’t take a 5 minute drive without encountering aggravated stupidity. People creeping along, terrified of the other half who blow through stop signs. The majority of drivers who have no idea what to do at a multiway stop even if they do stop. Those who see no reason to signal, or pull over when dropping someone off, or use a turn lane to actually turn, or think that they have right of way if they believe you can brake in time not to hit them. I really could go on…
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I would! I absolutely love roundabouts. There are probably some situations where they aren’t ideal, but in general I think they are fantastic and we should have way more of them.
