I noticed their Blue Jays jersey and asked if they had a game and we chatted about baseball, the sights in New York they’d visited, and Toronto.
I really enjoy my little conversations with strangers and find it hard to imagine a world where immediately upon stepping outside I’ve got headphones in and am totally insulated from the world around me.
No judgement, I get it, not everyone is gregarious, or in the mood for a chat with a stranger at every given moment.
But it sure is a more pleasant and fulfilling world for me when I’m interacting with other people even if it’s just for a few small moments here and there.
Hell, I spent a train ride talking to a man from Newark about all the clothes he stole from JC Penny’s that day. I don’t condone that behavior and I wouldn’t have struck up the conversation with him. But when he talked to me I listened and learned he got some of those clothes for his nephew. Even people you might judge as bad are trying to bring joy to others a lot of time and it’s certainly interesting to hear people’s perspectives. He showed me his food stamp card and told me how he was excited to help his friends have groceries, of course he was really hoping they’d make him a meal with them too!
So we're waiting to catch a train back to Prague and she ends up chatting with this other American who was there with her daughter. They continued talking the whole way back on the train and we ended up having dinner and romping around together for the rest of the night.
Well yeah why would you bother someone else with a question you could easily answer yourself?
However I will say I have had to develop the skill of knowing when to stop searching my own and just ask someone
This comment, for example.
Humans are a social species. These "interruptions" are close to the only thing we exist to do.
In the subway, people are rushing to leave and get where they're going, lots of people have headphones on and those who don't are wary of scammers and muggers. There have been jokes about strangers not talking in the subway system for decades.
I don't think this is a Millennial quirk, I'm at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, and I do the same, I just got back from a trip to Europe and used my phone the whole time to navigate the London underground and Paris Metro.
My phone will tell me which train to take (and which destination sign to look for), how many stops to travel, the names of the stops, as well as how long until the next train.
That's still not ok. When you get directions it tells you the end of the line it's going towards. If you aren't sure, you have to ask someone.
I am curious as to about when this word started to be used in favor against "anecdotal data".
On a related but side note: must every phrase be shortened?
YMMV, but IMHO yes.
Second anecdata: I manage a fairly large team of millenials, and to the person they generally describe themselves as highly introverted, to the point that it seems radical that when I'm in meetings with customers simple things like asking customers questions for clarification seem crazy to them.