Strangers, Smiling, and How I Befriended the TSA

[diaphenia]

I don’t understand people who can’t talk to strangers.

I mean, that’s not hyperbole. I just don’t get how strangers intimidate people.

Individual strangers? Sure. Some people are just going to twinge your nerves, because legitimately, some people are serial killers. But strangers, on the whole? Just people you haven’t talked to yet. And we’re all just people, trying to make it in this cold world.

The number one way to get comfortable with talking to strangers, in my opinion, is to dive in. I like to talk to people who aren’t super busy, who might be waiting for something themselves.

Here’s an example.

I was O’Hare waiting on my order at the Billy Goat. The man who ordered before me was wearing a bright yellow vest and several layers, leading me to deduce that he was a plane flagger. I asked him if he worked here, and he said he did. I complimented the airport—this is key, people like to hear nice things about the place they dedicate forty hours a week to, and really, though it’s easy to forget everywhere you go probably deserves a compliment anyway. I asked him about his job—how cold is it on that runway in January in Chicago? And then once he was chatting with me, I used to magic words, the implied question that always seems to get something out of stoic people.

You must see some crazy things.

Now, this doesn’t always work. The same question, posed at the Gold Coast Dogs cashier days earlier produced a shrug. Sometimes people are just not going to give you anything, or they have stories but they don’t feel comfortable pulling them out, or they themselves are shy. But as an icebreaker I have had remarkable success with this line. There’s an implied sense of intimacy there—I am on your side, I’m not one of those people who don’t get it. There’s a question without a question mark, a ball they can pick up and run with if they want to, or ignore if they don’t. There’s an acknowledgement that they work with or serve people who are occasionally irrational—the customer is not always right—and that their work is interesting, which it probably is. If you doubt their job is interesting, you need to open your mind.

It does work. Earlier that day I used that line on the TSA Officer who was rooting through my suitcase trying to determine if my hostess gift was going to blow up the airport (no) and she told me some fascinating stories, decided soap was not going to kill anyone, and ended up inviting me out to her monthly storytelling series.

People respond to friendliness most of the time. And really, sometimes you put yourself out there and people, for reasons that are often legitimate, don’t respond. And that’s ok. The next people you talk to will be friendlier.

A smile can you almost anything. Remembering someone's name (after they have offered it you- name tags don't count) is something that people really respond to. And assuming the best of people is usually a good thing. 

And I realize this is easy for me to say, because I work a job where I come into contact with tons of strangers, and I have a personality that works for that, and I’m also, generally speaking, a person who is not going to make other people nervous, because in most ways I fit in. But I think the general rule here still works, and people are going to respond when you are friendly and willing to ask them about themselves.

If you treat other people as though they are interesting people worthy of your respect and attention, they will usually become those people. 

Comments

[rebeccavis.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts! I actually agree with everything you've said, but the problem I have personally is that I often have this shyness that I have real trouble getting over. It's weird because once other people talk to me, I'm usually fine, but it's making that first step that's hard for me. I think it doesn't help that in the UK generally speaking it's very uncommon for strangers anywhere to just strike up a conversation. Part of the reason why I want to move to the US is because people there in my experience are much more willing to talk to you and I think that would be a really big help in drawing me out a bit.

[saucydiva.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I wasn't even considering that other Western cultures still are less friendly than I'm used to. I spent a week in London, and I found everyone very friendly. If I stood on a street corner and squinted at a map someone would come over and help me find (1) where I was on the map (2) where the thing was I was looking for (3) which direction East was. But admittedly that's very different from chatting with someone while waiting in line, which is what I do all the time here. But even that might be the area I live in, and not universal among Americans.

[rebeccavis.livejournal.com]

That's because in London most people are very used to tourists ;) British people are generally happy to help out if somebody needs directions, actually, but chatting to someone while waiting in line or even in a setting like a gym or whatever is very unusual here and I've been told that the rest of Europe is similar. I definitely noticed the difference when I went to the US and I've visited like 5 different cities there.

[saucydiva.livejournal.com]

That's fair! I stayed in London and didn't get to see the rest of the country. I've been to a few places in Europe, and the only one where strangers really started talking to me was in Ireland, in Dingle, but that was in diners and pubs.

I never thought about that; I suppose I assume I come off as a tourist and that's why natives aren't chatting me up, but it could very well be that they just wouldn't anyway.

[rebeccavis.livejournal.com]

That's a point, actually - I think people are a bit more friendly in Ireland. And there's a lot of Irish influence in the US, right? So maybe that's where you guys got it from ;)

[whimsical-irony.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I love airport security. Maybe it's because I'm 5'0" and look about twelve but they're always so nice when I inevitably forget to remove my laptop from my bag or the bobby pins from my hair. Not sure if I would have been able to keep my cool if they manhandled Li'l Sebastian though.

Also, you must see some crazy things.

[saucydiva.livejournal.com]

I do let me tell you all about them!

I went through airport security five times in nine days and I got hassled three times! I have to write about that one day; it was bizarre. I... I don't look like a serial killer.

[rikyl.livejournal.com]

"Ugh. I hate talking ... to people ... about things."

Just kidding (sort of). Actually you make this sound really fun, and the bonus part of talking to strangers is that it doesn't really matter what they end up thinking of you, if you don't have to see them again.

You must see some crazy things. I may have to try that line sometime. Did you worry at all, though, that they might think you were a terrorist trying to glean some information about the airport for your own nefarious purposes?

[saucydiva.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned, I got overly hassled at the airport(s), so maybe that's why I kept getting flagged for suspicious luggage/breasts.

But I think talking to strangers is awesome! You meet all sorts of fascinating people. It runs in my family, too, my grandmother is the queen of talking to people. We have a stranger in common, we realized- a man we both have met 'in the wild' and chatted with regularly, who realized we were related. And it's not like I'm from some tiny town!

[rikyl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually thought that's what this entry was going to be about. Weird. Maybe it had something to do with your flight plans--that you weren't just taking a trip to one place and then returning to the place you left from. I've heard that one-way tickets can be red flags. I don't think I've had any weird security experiences in airports, but I haven't flown in a couple years.

I'm not the kind of person to just start conversations while waiting in line, but after college I worked for a small-town newspaper for a year, so talking to strangers was basically my job for a while. We ran a lot of feature stories, which were basically "here is this interesting person, so go talk to them about what's interesting about them and write about it" situations. Like, I once interviewed this steeplejack whose job it was to travel from town to town and repaint flag poles and other things up in the air. You must have some crazy stories. I don't remember, but I probably used some variation of that. That was actually one of my favorite jobs I've had, even though small-town newspapers get no respect.

[rikyl.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, that's funny about the mutual stranger thing with your grandmother. I think Chicago is actually some sort of very large small town. I'm not from Chicago, but it seems like every time I go there, I randomly run into someone I know. It is eerie.