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A comment on Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living.

Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by bl4ckm0r3 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:14AM (#35521861)
To be honest I have experienced this a lot in San Francisco, where people ask first what do you do, second where do you work and then what's your name...in Europe it really isn't the central part of the conversation and most likely the job doesn't even get mentioned in a dinner or a normal conversation with someone you met in a bar/club/wherever. It always shocked me how "what you do" defines the start of the conversation over there.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by andreiii on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:35AM (#35522007)
I think that depends on the city. In very international cities like London or Brussels you usually start the conversation with "so what brought you hear?" knowing that most of the time is the job. So you try to understand what someone is doing. I find that a very common opener with someone you're just meating.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by johnchristopher on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:43AM (#35522056)
OT: Somehow, the spellchecker made a very ominous number on your comment.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by eloisant on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:49AM (#35522113)
I'm going to use the verb "to meat with someone" from now on.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by beambot on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @04:11AM (#35522273)
I like that!

Given how commonplace virtual "meet"ings are these days, I rather like the idea of a new homophonic homonym for in person "meat"ings.

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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by B1FF_PSUVM on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @06:56AM (#35523336)
Bring there ear.

(Yes.)

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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by tgv on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @03:52AM (#35522141)
It definitely is part of the conversation in (parts of) Europe, but not very central. I see it as part of finding common ground to continue the conversation.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by bl4ckm0r3 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @08:36AM (#35524285)
I do notice a difference between north and south of Europe (more likely to be asked in the north) but it always felt more like "do you do an interesting job?" more than "can you be useful for my next startup?" :P
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by tgv on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @09:25AM (#35524811)
Certainly. Very few people ask about your job to see if they can get something out of it. It's small-talk at the level of "do you have children" or "what's the name of your dog".
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by m00dy on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @04:19AM (#35522335)
I think in europe, it is even worse. Because, where you come from and which language you speak is the most important thing ever. Luckily, we have seen huge progress on LLMs and hopefully get rid of this nonsense.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by nailer on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @06:10AM (#35522998)
Just tell them you're a barista or if you really want to tell them you're uninterested, a chimney sweep.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by zamnos on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @07:02AM (#35523378)
It depends on who you're talking to in San Francisco, and everywhere, really. In my part of San Francisco, we don't ask the question what do you do, because that automatically slots you into one class or the other in the hierarchy, and so we intentionally avoid that in order to be able to interact without prejudice. Different scenes, same (tiny) city.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by bl4ckm0r3 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @08:37AM (#35524299)
One day at farmers market i was buying tomatoes and the guy asked me what was i doing (swe) and he started saying that he was only there to help his brother and that he works for a company that sells firewalls to other companies and tried to sell me the product, while putting tomatoes in a paper bag.
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by ismokedoinks on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @12:52PM (#35527795)
Sounds like you were both trying to feed your families :-) unfortunate that it makes so many of our interactions feel artificial
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Re:Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living by horns4lyfe on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @09:26AM (#35524819)
San Francisco had a period that I assume is over where a common first question was “so what are you building?” Ugh
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