And the late Gen-Xers, who, if they were nerds, often were the first to grow up with computers and internet in their lives.
I'm 45, I know plenty people my age who are grandparents.
Me personally, I was always on the bleeding edge of tech, worked in tech all my professional life too, so I'm less affected by this behavior.
But it makes it really hard to keep in touch with people my age online.
I was one of the first to join Facebook and one of the first to abandon it. But I had to make a new Facebook account about 5 years ago because these days my whole family keeps in touch through Facebook and sets up family gatherings through it and Whatsapp and lost the ability to text me that info ...
I think that's the main demographic of Lemmy from what I can gather. There is definitely a cohort of younger people, but most of us are due for colonoscopies
i legit avoid stores where the staff are notably friendly and talkative. i just want to get the thing i need, not feel obliged to talk and rude if i'm not in the mood [which is unfortunately often, but still a reality]
Yep. Servers in the US already have miserable work lives, and having to put on a smile and fake niceness because your take home pay depends on how much you get in tips is just terrible.
In my experience this mostly happens in the burbs. Once you get into the city no one gives a fuck about who you are and just wants you out of their line
I always skip going to restaurants for a while if one of the staff starts recognizing me. It's like yea that was a nice guy but I don't really want to be having conversations in the 20 minutes I have to go get lunch and go back to work.
Omg are we the same person? I actively avoid bodegas, caus fuck that same person behind the register shit. Much rather go to Walmart, where corporate America has so thoroughly destroyed their workers’ soul that they barely acknowledge your existence.
I just have some empty phrases for that purpose, like "It's going!" or "It sure is a day!". Feel free to combine with facial expressions that are difficult to interpret for maximum confusion.
Thing is, it's smalltalk. Smalltalk serves a purpose and it's not the acquisition of information, so your concrete answer is kind of vain.
Smalltalk is rather for getting an emotional feel for each other. It's the first step towards any sort of interpersonal relationship. And it can also lead to deeper topics, but it doesn't have to.
My go to answers are: "I'm hanging in there", "been better, been worse", "oh you know how it is", (if they ask "how's it going?") "it's going", etc. You can be honest without being candid.