You know the scene well. You turn up at a party or a meet a friend of a friend and the small talk starts. Very early on (if not one of the first things that is said) you hear or ask that question. The question that most people hate to answer. But you answer it anyway.
“What do you for a living?”
My eyes roll, my toes curls and I let out a small sigh.
“I work in IT, it’s really boring. What do you do?”
I find that this short, uninteresting answer does one of three things.
1. Shifts the focus back on them so you don’t spend the next 15 minutes talking about your day job.
2. Give them the opportunity to spout on about their day job for the next 15 minutes.
3. Due to the short uninterested response means that the small talk is over and the conversation is dead.
Here’s the thing, it’s not that I don’t want to be polite and get to know people. Of course work takes up so much of our lives that it is inevitable that people will spend a lot of time talking about it. It’s the fact that people (generalisation) define themselves and others by what they do.
The thing is, if you have a boring desk based job people don’t ask you any questions about it. However, my friends that work in the Police or Doctors get quizzed about what they have seen recently constantly. No-one asks me if i’ve sent any interesting emails recently.
I am often tempted to answer that question with “I’m an astronaut”. Unfortunately I have neither the confidence, acting skills or personality to pull of a convincing routine in that department.
There are some schools of though that state that you should answer they question with what you want to be, maybe I’ll try that next time. I’m trying to come up with a better bit of small talk to slot in place of that question, maybe I’ll start with asking “Do you play any instruments?” as I would be far more interested in anything people have to say about being musical than them talking about the internal admin they had to deal with this week.
What if I miss something great?
The thing is that you are still going to find out what people do, it’s still going to come up and you can latch on to it if it is something really cool. We must not forget that some people love what they do and are able to wake up pursuing their passion everyday – though you’ll probably find that these people are in the minority. If they do pursue such a path, I’m sure it will become obvious early in the conversation anyway.
Do you have any thoughts on this stance or any alternative questions that could be asked? Please share your ideas in the comments below.
