Latest news with #smalltalk
Daily Mail
04-08-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
After four years of being sober, I picked up a glass of prosecco at a party. This is the startling truth about what happened next... ANNIKI SOMMERVILLE
Sobriety coaches and online influencers often say that this is the bit where you should feel smug and more interesting without booze, but honestly for me it was often the opposite. For four years I was teetotal and socialising was always a pain. At parties, small talk was so small, I never felt that anything ever connected, or that there was an actual point to talking. It was so superficial – the weather, my journey, my clothes, the articles I'd just written.
Washington Post
29-07-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
What your barista thinks of your small talk game
'Maybe it's just a midwestern thing, but can we please stop having the cashiers ask intrusive questions to the patrons as they check out?' a woman pleaded in a viral tweet this month. The 'intrusive' question: 'Any big plans for the night?' Grumbling about small talk with service workers is the bread and butter (in a complimentary basket) of social media. Considered outside the context of likes and retweet buttons, these complaints can sound a bit like 18th-century gentry commiserating about the help. 'Uber drivers PLEASE stop trying to make conversation,' groused a rider on Reddit, criticizing the driver's 'constant yapping.' Another woman, ordering through Instacart, complained of her shopper's incompetence in failing to secure her Neapolitan ice cream without engaging her in a back-and-forth. Other commentary is friendlier — across social media, the theory that Trader Joe's employees are trained to flirt with customers is repeated as fact. Despite the rise in self-checkout, the quiet creep of robotaxis and the ubiquity of door-to-door delivery services, opportunities for small talk between customers and service workers persist. And while person-to-person interactions are more optional than ever, some things haven't changed: Some customers complain when they encounter small talk, and some customers complain when they don't. In a paper in the European Journal of Marketing published in 2022, a group of marketers laid out the argument for this phenomenon: In customer service, you truly cannot please everyone. There are 'exchange oriented' customers, who value efficient service and are impatient with small talk. ('Exchange oriented customers may be particularly well-suited to being served by virtual assistants or service robots,' the researchers mused.) Then there are 'communally oriented' customers, who value connection and positively glow in response to questions like, 'Any fun plans for the weekend?' Given this, the researchers suggested, 'Service providers should consider customers' relationship orientation before starting a conversation with small talk.' For America's 24.6 million service workers — who make an average of $33,396 each year, half of the national average income — this means trying to read body language, note eye contact and interpret tone in a matter of seconds, sometimes while working an espresso machine. 'I usually start my interactions by saying, 'Hey how's it going?' so they can either engage with that, or they can blow through it,' says Allie Lawrence, a barista and manager at an independently owned coffee shop in Brooklyn. 'It's kind of like you're having to micro-therapize people before even interacting with them because you're not sure what the energy is you're going to get.' Scotty Ross, who lives in Chandler, Arizona, and drives for Uber, starts with, 'How's your day going?' And then, 'I kind of catch the vibe from there,' he says. (When he's a passenger and doesn't feel like talking, he gives polite one-word answers. 'It feels like one of those 'Seinfeld' episode situations,' he says.) Customers who respond harshly to friendly overtures may not realize that at some businesses, small talk is a requirement for workers, not a personal choice. When Lawrence trains new workers, she suggests a few phrases, like, 'Hey, how's it going?' or, 'Good to see you, what can I get started?' At some places, she says, workers can get written up for skipping this step. 'It is kind of our job to give a 'wow' experience,' says William, a Trader Joe's employee in Seattle who asked to withhold his last name to speak freely about his workplace. 'Hey, how's it going?' is William's only prepared line. 'From there, if they seem like they want to talk, I'll ask more questions. If not, I'll let it be, I just ring them out and bag them and let them go.' Shoppers tell him about their ongoing chemotherapy and the death of their beloved cats. This kind of thing didn't happen when he worked at Costco, William says. During morning shifts at Trader Joe's, elderly people come in wanting someone to talk to. But the conversations aren't always pleasant. Customers have yelled at his co-workers for not engaging in sufficient conversation, he says. According to the American Psychological Association's 2023 Work in America Survey, nearly a third of respondents who worked in person with customers or patients said they had experienced verbal abuse in the past year, compared with 22 percent of office workers. For some service workers, small talk makes business sense. 'I would say most riders don't tip, and they're more likely to tip if they get into a conversation,' says Ross. When Ross started driving for Uber in 2016, he remembers keeping 80 percent of each fare. Now, he says Uber gives him only 30 to 50 percent of what each rider pays. Tips can make the difference, he pointed out, between making around minimum wage in Arizona (before the cost of gas, car maintenance and taxes) and making double that. Lawrence also sees a correlation between conversation and tips. 'The more of an experience or a show that I'm able to curate for the customer, potentially that results in higher tips,' she says. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski is credited with first describing 'a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words.' In 1923, he described these exchanges, which he called 'phatic communication,' as 'purposeless expressions of preference or aversions, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious.' Like, say, exchanging observations about the weather with a stranger before making them an oat milk latte. Malinowski's definition hints at why small talk can be strangely polarizing — it is by design both meaningless and crucial. 'It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy,' Elizabeth Bennet demands, when her dance partner refuses to make small talk. 'I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.' The European marketers might say that Elizabeth is more 'communally-oriented' and Darcy is more 'exchange-oriented.' Ella Fuller, a server in Iowa City, says that these exchanges are a part of the job she enjoys. 'If there's a place in between small talk and overshare, I've always really liked that part of service,' she said. Fuller works at a bar and cafe and had previous gigs at a barbecue spot and an Italian restaurant. At each of these jobs, she says, she had experiences where instances of small talk devolved into customers making inappropriate comments about her body. At the barbecue spot, she told those customers to knock it off. But at the Italian restaurant, she felt obligated to smile through all customer behavior. She eventually brought the issue to management and was supported. The idea that the customer is always right, writes researcher Dana Yagil, 'implies, for customers as well as for service providers, that customers are entitled to misbehave, while service providers are expected to put up with such misbehaviors.' A shift, as of late, is that service workers are responding to customers with their own complaints and screeds. On TikTok, nearly 6 million followers tune in to watch actor and longtime server Drew Talbert dramatize restaurant behavior from a server's perspective. Bartenders go viral for satirizing pushy customers. Lawrence, who does stand-up comedy, makes videos reenacting interactions with customers who inexplicably demand made-up coffee drinks. Servers have taken to TikTok to imitate the 'Gen Z stare,' a reference to the way some young adults stare coldly at servers, as if rebuking them for the question, 'Hi, what can I help you with today?' Finding the right balance of small talk is a customer-facing worker's struggle. 'I don't know why — I can't stop myself — I talk too much,' moans Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman,' comparing himself to more successful colleagues. Ross advises other Uber drivers to let customers do 80 percent of the talking. 'Try not to interrupt them and tell your own stories,' he cautions. 'Basically, be an interviewer.' He notices that he gets his best tips when he's drinking an energy drink and feels cheerful and energized. That service-oriented self isn't always accessible, and that affects his income. 'The first week after my dad died I don't think I got any tips because I was in a bad mood, but I still needed to make some money,' he says. 'You never really know what someone's going through,' he notes — whether driver or rider.
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The new rules of small talk: how to nail every conversation, from first dates to weddings, parties and funerals
The cliche about small talk is that everybody hates it. The misapprehension is that it has to be small. In fact, conversational interactions are objectively good. 'The person who starts the conversation is in a better mood afterwards; they tend to feel more connected – and not just to the person they're talking to,' says Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. 'We all have a fundamental need to feel connected, valued and seen.' Even if small talk were not socially beneficial, society would demand it nonetheless – we are coming in to wedding season and we are all going to need some moves. However, we have this perception that there are rules, which haven't really changed since the 50s: keep things light and relevant, avoid sex, religion and politics, stay on safe territory, such as the weather. But anodyne topics tend to be boring and difficult to segue out of. Journalists are always good at talking to strangers and distant acquaintances – not because we are nice, as I have just discovered, through the work of Patrick King, the bestselling social interaction coach, but because conversation is infinitely easier when you have a 'social purpose', ie you need something: an opinion, an insight, a nugget of knowledge, 50p. So that is rule one: whatever you ask, imagine that you absolutely need to know the answer. Tom Bouchier Hayes, a broadcast journalist and a good friend, is famous for his small talk: he once met a guy in the sea and chatted for 40 minutes. He supplies rule two: 'If you reveal something expected of yourself, people tend to reciprocate. You can up the ante quite quickly by saying something different.' Beyond that, there are no rules – it all depends on the situation. My uncle said once that he preferred funerals to weddings; I thought he was going to say something deep and melancholy about the evanescence of love and the finality of death, but he actually ended: 'Just because I know more people.' Everyone dreads wedding small talk, because it tends to be insipid – on this happy day, of all days, no one wants to talk about things that matter – and the conversational drift is all towards matrimony ('When are you two going to get married?' 'Are you married?'). These are dead ends, because no couple will tell you straight off the bat that they are unhappy and there is nothing more boring than a happy couple. 'I don't tend to like talking to people in couples,' Bouchier Hayes says. 'They're often a bit cagey with what they reveal when their partner is listening. If they have a double act, it's often a bit thin.' Pick off one half of a couple. Sandstrom says: 'Small talk is building a bridge to get somewhere more interesting, so start with the thing you have in common, which will be the location or the event. At a wedding, my instinct is: 'Bride or groom?' and: 'How do you know them?'' Trust that the conversation will pivot from 'the groom is my cousin' to somewhere more interesting – 'my other cousin is in prison, but that's not the groom's brother, he's from a second aunt who fought in the French resistance'. 'There is some research showing that, when people talk to strangers, they enjoy it more when they go a little deeper,' says Sandstrom. 'We have this instinct that we should go bland and stick to the small talk, but that's not what anybody wants; we all want something more meaningful.' You have a huge amount in common – you work together – but you also have this giant power imbalance, which can be catastrophic for easy chat. Don't gabble; don't say something indiscreet in a panic; don't raise something that should be said in a meeting. I would proffer some low-stakes but helpful intelligence: 'Have you tried the new beetroot salad in the canteen? Well, you shouldn't – it tastes of earth.' Bouchier Hayes can go one better (more awkward) than a lift. 'I was changing in the loo, because I'd cycled in. It was very early. I'd taken my clothes off and one of the presenters came in while I was completely nude. He was a business reporter. I said: 'How are the markets this morning, Charles?'' Yvalia Febrer, a professor of social work at Kingston University in south-west London, describes the concept of the common third, a shared activity that can be one of the fastest shortcuts to intimacy. Doing something together breaks down reserve, upends hierarchy and generates its own priorities, vocabulary and, over time, humour. The common third was devised as a model between social workers and hard-to-reach young people, but it applies equally to korfball, or similar. Discuss what to do next with the ball and which opponent to annihilate; the rest will take care of itself. It depends on what you want from the date; if it's just a quick background check that they are not a weirdo and you are looking for something no-strings, you can flag that frankly. A conversation that starts: 'This is just me checking that you're lucid and reasonable in order that I may have sex with you inconsequentially,' will probably flow well. If you are looking for a more lasting relationship, take a look at the psychologist Arthur Aron's 36 questions. Don't do this conversation – it would sound forced to blurt out: 'If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?' Even though the list was designed not with romance in mind, but to create deeper conversations, it's now so associated with falling in love that, if you bring it up, it will be you who doesn't sound lucid or reasonable. But it's an interesting template for generating openness, vulnerability and self-reflection, which is to say a person's best self. I'm going to risk being self-referential, because I think this is useful: I often interview the people for the Guardian feature Dining across the divide, where people who hotly disagree meet to talk about their disagreement. It's striking how many of them say some variation of: 'It was much more like a date than [the other Guardian series] Blind date.' Politics is good. Disagreeing is good. 'As long as you're respectful and open about it,' Sandstrom says. 'But people are when they're talking to a stranger. If you're talking to someone you're really close to and they disagree on something fundamental, it feels really threatening. It's easier to stay open-minded with someone you don't know.' The particular difficulties of school-gate chat are: first, that people aren't interesting when they are talking about their children; and second, that people's insecurities are foregrounded by the environment. Maybe your kid is truly behaving badly (not mine – they never did); maybe you feel judged by the other parents; maybe you are in trouble with a teacher for forgetting something critical, which is an unpleasant and unfamiliar experience for an adult to have. I found my school-gate tribe by ceaselessly slagging off other, more judgmental mothers. I made some incredibly precious friends, way later in life than I expected (and when I wasn't looking for any). Some other people really hated me, but that is fine, too. This is a lot of people's worst nightmare, particularly if everyone else seems to know one another and people are moving in gaggles. Sandstrom says: 'I ran a workshop last week on how to have a conversation and one person came up with their own solution, which was to say something like: 'Hey, you guys seem like you're having a good time; can I join you?'' This is a tricky manoeuvre, because you can't go for the obvious – how do you know the host? You would be dragging the group back to base camp. Better to listen until the conversation suggests a question, then ask a follow-up – research shows that people like you more when you ask follow-up questions, because it shows you were listening. If their conversation is flagging, you can take the reins, but 'one anecdote is the right amount of anecdotes', says Bouchier Hayes. 'I've told my Diana [Princess of Wales] anecdote maybe a thousand times; it can be short, medium or long, depending on the audience.' (Here is the micro version: it was 1990, he was filming something in Kensington Palace, she was unhappily married to Prince Charles and she asked him out. He loves that story.) A corporate scene needs a corporate answer. King's Better Small Talk is good on how to build social purpose across a range of business gatherings. If it's a conference, ask someone what they thought of the keynote, but not too open-endedly – choose a specific point in the talk. (This may involve listening to the keynote.) If it's a buffet, ask someone where the forks are. Asking for help, even on the most trivial matter, signals humility and cooperation, which are qualities that get squashed in a professional environment. There are so many possible scenarios. If it's social and formal, see 'At a wedding', above. The most important thing is that you don't hang on your partner's arm and cramp his or her style – you need to take a good time with you. You won't have a very interesting answer to: 'How do you know the birthday boy?' so it's better to ask the first question yourself. If it's social and informal, talk about whatever you like – except, whatever you do, don't try to interrogate your partner's friends on his or her previous relationships. If the gang is stiff and the conversation runs dry, tell them Diana asked you out. If you are roaming about chatting unattended, could people think you are flirting with them? Sandstrom says not. 'When people are in an environment where flirting is a normal thing to do, like in a speed-dating event, they are still not great at recognising what flirting looks like. But outside those situations, that's just not where people's minds tend to go.' If it's a work event, it's fine – possibly better – to stick close to your partner; if they are junior, they will have all manner of coping bolt-ons to their personality that you may not know about; you want to avoid accidentally unmasking them as, say, not an Arsenal fan. If they are senior, they don't need you making a rebellious sub‑group with other plus-ones, or disclosing five things in a minute that they have never told anyone in 15 years. On a work away day with my first husband, I learned the international hand signal for 'dial it down'. OK, I can tell you what not to do. I sat next to a woman on a train who was reading Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and I said: 'God, isn't it brilliant?' But she was reading it on her phone and millennials hate it when you look at their phones. So she said: 'I've only just started it,' in a 'move along, boomer' tone, then went to WhatsApp, to tell her friend what this incredibly intrusive train‑neighbour had just done, stopping in the middle of the message to check that I wasn't also reading that, except I was. Sandstrom talks on the tube all the time. Because there are so many external stimuli – the noise, the other people – a one‑to-one conversation creates a cocoon, which intensifies focus. People tend not to initiate on public transport because they fear rejection, but that is rarer than you may think. Sandstrom studied 200 people having conversations every day for a week across various environments and found that people were rejected only 13% of the time. The topic is easy – you talk about the dead person – but the age span of mourners is always huge. Don't be deterred. Sandstrom says: 'I did a study of cross‑generational conversations – one group of 25- to 30-year-olds, one of 65- to 70-year-olds, talking within their groups and across them. As with all the studies that I've done, people ended up enjoying their conversations far more than they expected to. They felt they learned more or were exposed to a different perspective more when they had cross-generational conversations. 'I think we give people more benefit of the doubt when they're different to us. And we're not that different. Everybody just wants to figure out how to live and be happy.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The new rules of small talk: how to nail every conversation, from first dates to weddings, parties and funerals
The cliche about small talk is that everybody hates it. The misapprehension is that it has to be small. In fact, conversational interactions are objectively good. 'The person who starts the conversation is in a better mood afterwards; they tend to feel more connected – and not just to the person they're talking to,' says Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. 'We all have a fundamental need to feel connected, valued and seen.' Even if small talk were not socially beneficial, society would demand it nonetheless – we are coming in to wedding season and we are all going to need some moves. However, we have this perception that there are rules, which haven't really changed since the 50s: keep things light and relevant, avoid sex, religion and politics, stay on safe territory, such as the weather. But anodyne topics tend to be boring and difficult to segue out of. Journalists are always good at talking to strangers and distant acquaintances – not because we are nice, as I have just discovered, through the work of Patrick King, the bestselling social interaction coach, but because conversation is infinitely easier when you have a 'social purpose', ie you need something: an opinion, an insight, a nugget of knowledge, 50p. So that is rule one: whatever you ask, imagine that you absolutely need to know the answer. Tom Bouchier Hayes, a broadcast journalist and a good friend, is famous for his small talk: he once met a guy in the sea and chatted for 40 minutes. He supplies rule two: 'If you reveal something expected of yourself, people tend to reciprocate. You can up the ante quite quickly by saying something different.' Beyond that, there are no rules – it all depends on the situation. My uncle said once that he preferred funerals to weddings; I thought he was going to say something deep and melancholy about the evanescence of love and the finality of death, but he actually ended: 'Just because I know more people.' Everyone dreads wedding small talk, because it tends to be insipid – on this happy day, of all days, no one wants to talk about things that matter – and the conversational drift is all towards matrimony ('When are you two going to get married?' 'Are you married?'). These are dead ends, because no couple will tell you straight off the bat that they are unhappy and there is nothing more boring than a happy couple. 'I don't tend to like talking to people in couples,' Bouchier Hayes says. 'They're often a bit cagey with what they reveal when their partner is listening. If they have a double act, it's often a bit thin.' Pick off one half of a couple. Sandstrom says: 'Small talk is building a bridge to get somewhere more interesting, so start with the thing you have in common, which will be the location or the event. At a wedding, my instinct is: 'Bride or groom?' and: 'How do you know them?'' Trust that the conversation will pivot from 'the groom is my cousin' to somewhere more interesting – 'my other cousin is in prison, but that's not the groom's brother, he's from a second aunt who fought in the French resistance'. 'There is some research showing that, when people talk to strangers, they enjoy it more when they go a little deeper,' says Sandstrom. 'We have this instinct that we should go bland and stick to the small talk, but that's not what anybody wants; we all want something more meaningful.' You have a huge amount in common – you work together – but you also have this giant power imbalance, which can be catastrophic for easy chat. Don't gabble; don't say something indiscreet in a panic; don't raise something that should be said in a meeting. I would proffer some low-stakes but helpful intelligence: 'Have you tried the new beetroot salad in the canteen? Well, you shouldn't – it tastes of earth.' Bouchier Hayes can go one better (more awkward) than a lift. 'I was changing in the loo, because I'd cycled in. It was very early. I'd taken my clothes off and one of the presenters came in while I was completely nude. He was a business reporter. I said: 'How are the markets this morning, Charles?'' Yvalia Febrer, a professor of social work at Kingston University in south-west London, describes the concept of the common third, a shared activity that can be one of the fastest shortcuts to intimacy. Doing something together breaks down reserve, upends hierarchy and generates its own priorities, vocabulary and, over time, humour. The common third was devised as a model between social workers and hard-to-reach young people, but it applies equally to korfball, or similar. Discuss what to do next with the ball and which opponent to annihilate; the rest will take care of itself. It depends on what you want from the date; if it's just a quick background check that they are not a weirdo and you are looking for something no-strings, you can flag that frankly. A conversation that starts: 'This is just me checking that you're lucid and reasonable in order that I may have sex with you inconsequentially,' will probably flow well. If you are looking for a more lasting relationship, take a look at the psychologist Arthur Aron's 36 questions. Don't do this conversation – it would sound forced to blurt out: 'If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?' Even though the list was designed not with romance in mind, but to create deeper conversations, it's now so associated with falling in love that, if you bring it up, it will be you who doesn't sound lucid or reasonable. But it's an interesting template for generating openness, vulnerability and self-reflection, which is to say a person's best self. I'm going to risk being self-referential, because I think this is useful: I often interview the people for the Guardian feature Dining across the divide, where people who hotly disagree meet to talk about their disagreement. It's striking how many of them say some variation of: 'It was much more like a date than [the other Guardian series] Blind date.' Politics is good. Disagreeing is good. 'As long as you're respectful and open about it,' Sandstrom says. 'But people are when they're talking to a stranger. If you're talking to someone you're really close to and they disagree on something fundamental, it feels really threatening. It's easier to stay open-minded with someone you don't know.' The particular difficulties of school-gate chat are: first, that people aren't interesting when they are talking about their children; and second, that people's insecurities are foregrounded by the environment. Maybe your kid is truly behaving badly (not mine – they never did); maybe you feel judged by the other parents; maybe you are in trouble with a teacher for forgetting something critical, which is an unpleasant and unfamiliar experience for an adult to have. I found my school-gate tribe by ceaselessly slagging off other, more judgmental mothers. I made some incredibly precious friends, way later in life than I expected (and when I wasn't looking for any). Some other people really hated me, but that is fine, too. This is a lot of people's worst nightmare, particularly if everyone else seems to know one another and people are moving in gaggles. Sandstrom says: 'I ran a workshop last week on how to have a conversation and one person came up with their own solution, which was to say something like: 'Hey, you guys seem like you're having a good time; can I join you?'' This is a tricky manoeuvre, because you can't go for the obvious – how do you know the host? You would be dragging the group back to base camp. Better to listen until the conversation suggests a question, then ask a follow-up – research shows that people like you more when you ask follow-up questions, because it shows you were listening. If their conversation is flagging, you can take the reins, but 'one anecdote is the right amount of anecdotes', says Bouchier Hayes. 'I've told my Diana [Princess of Wales] anecdote maybe a thousand times; it can be short, medium or long, depending on the audience.' (Here is the micro version: it was 1990, he was filming something in Kensington Palace, she was unhappily married to Prince Charles and she asked him out. He loves that story.) A corporate scene needs a corporate answer. King's Better Small Talk is good on how to build social purpose across a range of business gatherings. If it's a conference, ask someone what they thought of the keynote, but not too open-endedly – choose a specific point in the talk. (This may involve listening to the keynote.) If it's a buffet, ask someone where the forks are. Asking for help, even on the most trivial matter, signals humility and cooperation, which are qualities that get squashed in a professional environment. There are so many possible scenarios. If it's social and formal, see 'At a wedding', above. The most important thing is that you don't hang on your partner's arm and cramp his or her style – you need to take a good time with you. You won't have a very interesting answer to: 'How do you know the birthday boy?' so it's better to ask the first question yourself. If it's social and informal, talk about whatever you like – except, whatever you do, don't try to interrogate your partner's friends on his or her previous relationships. If the gang is stiff and the conversation runs dry, tell them Diana asked you out. If you are roaming about chatting unattended, could people think you are flirting with them? Sandstrom says not. 'When people are in an environment where flirting is a normal thing to do, like in a speed-dating event, they are still not great at recognising what flirting looks like. But outside those situations, that's just not where people's minds tend to go.' If it's a work event, it's fine – possibly better – to stick close to your partner; if they are junior, they will have all manner of coping bolt-ons to their personality that you may not know about; you want to avoid accidentally unmasking them as, say, not an Arsenal fan. If they are senior, they don't need you making a rebellious sub‑group with other plus-ones, or disclosing five things in a minute that they have never told anyone in 15 years. On a work away day with my first husband, I learned the international hand signal for 'dial it down'. OK, I can tell you what not to do. I sat next to a woman on a train who was reading Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and I said: 'God, isn't it brilliant?' But she was reading it on her phone and millennials hate it when you look at their phones. So she said: 'I've only just started it,' in a 'move along, boomer' tone, then went to WhatsApp, to tell her friend what this incredibly intrusive train‑neighbour had just done, stopping in the middle of the message to check that I wasn't also reading that, except I was. Sandstrom talks on the tube all the time. Because there are so many external stimuli – the noise, the other people – a one‑to-one conversation creates a cocoon, which intensifies focus. People tend not to initiate on public transport because they fear rejection, but that is rarer than you may think. Sandstrom studied 200 people having conversations every day for a week across various environments and found that people were rejected only 13% of the time. The topic is easy – you talk about the dead person – but the age span of mourners is always huge. Don't be deterred. Sandstrom says: 'I did a study of cross‑generational conversations – one group of 25- to 30-year-olds, one of 65- to 70-year-olds, talking within their groups and across them. As with all the studies that I've done, people ended up enjoying their conversations far more than they expected to. They felt they learned more or were exposed to a different perspective more when they had cross-generational conversations. 'I think we give people more benefit of the doubt when they're different to us. And we're not that different. Everybody just wants to figure out how to live and be happy.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Fast Company
23-06-2025
- General
- Fast Company
Small talk isn't worthless. Here's how to use it to accelerate your career
BY Listen to this Article More info 0:00 / 5:06 'I heard it's supposed to rain this weekend.' 'How about those Cubs?' 'Did you hear Ed, the escaped zebra from Tennessee?' If you groan at the thought of small talk, you're not alone. More than 70% of Americans said they'd prefer to just sit in silence over talking about the weather, sports, or current events, according to a survey by the online education site Preply. While small talk is often viewed as the unnecessary fluff that comes before something real is discussed, that attitude doesn't do its importance justice, says Deb Feder, author of Tell Me More: Building Trusted Client Relationships through Everyday Interactions. 'I think small talk is where the 'real' is found,' she says. 'It's where the depth of a relationship can really be cemented. It's taking conversations and allowing them to evolve by getting curious and by taking time to get to know others.'
