You never know who might be interested in what you have to say.
Part of my preparation for traveling to England was to add an international plan to my phone. (I admit it’s by no means necessary, but my family was adamant I needed it.) So after calling my phone carrier, they told me my phone was too old and I wouldn’t be able to use it abroad. Go figure, that’s what I get for not replacing my 6-year-old phone that’s worked perfectly fine for me so far.
Either way, the moral to this story isn’t that you should replace your phone (no point replacing what isn’t broken, in my opinion). It’s in what occurred when I went into the store.
Let’s say the representative who helped me was named Paul. Now Paul seemed like a nice enough guy, helpful, knowledgeable, all the stuff you hope the rep who’s helping you is. He compared a few phones with me, showed me which ones had the best battery life, and I picked my phone.
What’s noteworthy about this trip in particular is that instead of thanking him and then walking out of the store (what I did the other three times Paul helped me–I swear, he’s not the only employee, but it sure feels like it there), I said I was an app developer. Now I’m not really, not yet at least (I specifically picked out an android phone because I happen to know Java and wanted to learn how to develop). I didn’t have any real reason to say it, and I said it more to myself than anything, but Paul asked me who I was working for; it turns out he was a computer science guy too! Then we went on and talked for at least another hour (turned out him and I are both in school for computer science), until the manager came over and gently let Paul know that he had other customers to help. Paul gave me his business card, and I intend to let him know the next time I have some buddies over to play Pathfinder.
A second story. On one of my connecting flights to London, I sat next to a nice lady who I’ll call Janet. We sat there, waiting for our flight to take off. The pilot tells us our flight will be delayed because the airport we were flying to is experiencing weather. It’ll be about 20 minutes before we can take off. I introduce myself to Janet, and I find out she’s traveling to Las Vegas on a business trip.
We ended up sitting on the plane for an hour and a half before we could go, but it certainly didn’t feel long as she and I ended up talking about our relatives in Florida almost the entire time. Who knew?
These experiences really opened my eyes about how easy it is to connect to other people—just say “Hi, my name is Matt, what’s yours?” (Well, maybe you should use your own name when you say it.) Ask what they do, where they grew up, what kinds of activities they like to do, or mention something about you that you think is interesting. I’ve found people are more receptive to conversation than I thought.