How to win friends and influence grocery clerks
Small talk is a curious thing.
The Polyfilla of social discourse, it’s intended to fill in the chinks between more important talk. Small talk is typically defined as “polite conversation about unimportant or uncontroversial matters.”
Small talk can be a pain, even excruciating. Take my friend Gord’s experience. Recently, something went technically awry with his online bank account. To fix it, the bank connected him with a customer representative. Gord thinks this fellow was based in India.
There were long gaps on the phone while the rep did complicated computer stuff. During these interludes, he engaged in small talk.
Here is Gord’s recollection of the conversation.
Rep (in accented English): “Well sir, how is the weather where you are today?” Gord: “Cloudy.” Rep: “So … um, what you normally eat on a cloudy day?”
Gord: “Lunch. But this is taking so long, I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.”
Ten more minutes went by while the rep deleted Gord’s faulty app, reinstalled it twice and then waited for it to log on.
Rep: “So … this question may seem like it’s coming out of the blue. But if you had to choose, which would you prefer, spaghetti sauce or marinara sauce?”
(Yes, that last one doesn’t quite make sense, but that’s what he said.)
Gord (after a five seconds of silence): “You’re right, that does sound out of the blue.”
My friend then told the customer rep he’d be happy to engage in further small talk once he’d fixed his problem. And then he hung up.
To me, this conversation is both funny and fascinating. At the same time, I felt sorry for the customer rep. Did his small talk come from a manual? Perhaps Customer Reps: You Too Can Make Small Talk! advised: “It’s always safe to ask about the weather. If this runs dry, ask the customer how weather conditions reflect on his food preferences.”
Another friend says she gets impatient whenever grocery checkout clerks ask what her plans are for the rest of the day. This friend says she never feels like revealing her après-shopping itinerary.
That’s my reaction, too. Don’t get me wrong. I have real compassion for checkout clerks. Have you ever seen one patiently deal with Mrs. Fistful of Coupons or Mr. I Miscalculated What’s in My Wallet So Let’s Start Putting Stuff Aside One by One?
On the other hand, asking what I’m doing the rest of the day is a waste of time — for both of us. The clerk might feign fascination upon learning I’m about to mow the lawn or watch an American Pickers marathon. But as it’s small talk, he/she doesn’t really care. And I am utterly uninterested in relaying this information.
Besides, the reality is usually more complicated. I routinely make up something because it’s a hassle to say: “I plan to spend the afternoon trying to discover what’s making that bad smell in the crawl space — all the time praying it’s not a deceased rodent. And if there is a dead rat, I’ll ignore it and tell my wife there’s no smell.”
But, friends, choose your fib carefully. When lying to the grocery clerk, it’s best not to say something like: “This afternoon I’ll be doing … um, more errands.” Such a response is too vacuous, too uninspired. The clerk instantly deduces you are (1) concocting the lamest reply possible and (2) trying to dissuade further conversation.
This clerk will then question his or her small-talk skills, lose social confidence, never meet that special someone and spend the rest of his/her life making spaghetti with marinara for one.
The key to making false statements to the grocery clerk is matching the mundane with the esoteric. Put another way, a carefully chosen offbeat detail adds veracity.
For instance, don’t say: “This afternoon I’ll be crocheting.” Instead, say: “This afternoon I’ll be crocheting a teeny-tiny jacket for a parrot owned by my friend Jack, who has only one ear. The parrot’s name is Cleo. That’s because she can sing Cleo Laine’s song You’ll Answer to Me, which made the British Top 10 in 1961. Cleo was born without feathers, hence the need for the crocheted jacket. Just to be clear, I don’t mean Cleo Laine was born without feathers! Ha ha. That totally doesn’t follow.”
Lob out this one and you’ll not only shoot through the checkout stand in record time, you’ll never again get asked: “What are you doing for the rest of the day?” At least by that clerk. Next week: Choosing your happy place.