Hi, how are you?
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006Small talk. I mean, you run into someone that you’ve never met before, will never meet again, and is no acquaintance of yours. The conversation usually goes as follows:
You: Hi, how are you doing today?
Them: Not too bad. You?
You: Just fine, thank you.
This sounds like you’ve picked up a “Learn English in 30 days” (en espanol) and this is the dialog you must memorize to properly learn greetings and small talk in another language. Come on, seriously. When you ask someone you’ve never met, how are you doing, do you honestly care what the answer is going to be? If you’re having a lousy day, are you really going to tell them anything too different than “fine” when they ask you?
No and no.
And seriously, some of us go through variations of this conversation all day. I work the register a lot at work. I’ll go through this with each and every customer, well over a hundred instances of “and how are you doing today?” in any given day. Why? Because it’s expected. I guess it’s a shadow of small town stores where everyone knew everyone and this was the way you got in touch with your neighbors.
Small talk. It’s driving me nuts.
