Strangers, Smiling, and How I Befriended the TSA
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.