I was a 20-something Aussie far from home. It was my first week of working in the UK, and a colleague greeted me with: “Good morning, Brett, how are you?”
“Well,” I replied,“I’m feeling a little tired. Just starting to find my way around, but …”
“No,” he interjected. “You don’t understand the convention here. When I say, ‘How are you?’, I’m not interested in how you are or what you are doing, it’s just an expression. I say ‘How are you?’, you say, ‘Good’, ‘Fine’ or whatever and then we just shut up and get on with the job.”
I was a little taken aback by this, because I am rather fond of small talk.
To me, it’s the trivial stuff that greases the wheels for the bigger conversations about great matters. An appetiser before the main course. The overture to the opera. The … well, you know what I mean.
Would it really have hurt my erstwhile workmate to at least pretend he was interested in my health and how I was adapting to life in a new country? At the time, it would have done wonders for my confidence.
And maybe I could have teased out some information from him, identified a few mutual interests and a great friendship would have emerged.
As it happens, I did make some good friends at that workplace … just not that guy.
So, the conversation continues …
