Asking Questions

A Facebook (FB)  friend posted a message about interpreting why people ask particular conversational questions at a dance. His focus was on the “what do you do for a living” question. He was single, so he was wondering if women were sizing up his wallet, measuring his dating worthiness. A fairly serious pondering on his part!

Firstly, being asked what you do, or anything else for that matter, is not... an indication that the two of you are heading into dating. Or so says the married guy! I could be wrong on this. With that said, the qeustion has lots of other purposes. Getting-to-know-you chit-chat can be difficult. One of the commentators echoed what I was thinking, that the question about work was one of those safe questions you ask people. The other two I hear a lot are “what is your major” and “where are you from”. Well, I hear the second one mostly. I look a bit old to be another college attendee. Another commentator said that the question was there to guage if there was a common ground for interests. I agree with this!

Secondly, job titles are weird things and don’t immediately lend themselves to knowing what a person makes. The can indicate a person’s general interests, if they are right or left brained, and a very relative measurement of maturity. What do you think???

So what happens when people chit-chat with me? Here is a summary:

Question: What do you do?
Answer: I am a software compliance analyst… that means I am a fancy technical writer.
Resulting impression: I have no idea what that is…

Question: Where do you live?
Answer: Pickens.
Resulting impression: I have no idea where that is…

Questions: Are you that photographer?
Answer: Yes!
Resulting impression: he might be OK after all.

Sigh… I really need to get a new job title and I need to live somewhere more cool!