Social Skills Atrophy
I don’t know why I seem to attract people who have lost their way. Am I approachable or do I look like I know where I am going?
So at lunch time today, I was just leaving Brentwood Mall when I was approached by a man in the parking lot. If you have to ask me to describe how he looks, I would say that he reminds me of Cypher from the Matrix – so much so that I wondered if he is going to turn me over to the machines. He seemed friendly so I figured that there would be no harm talking to him.
He was asking for directions to Champlain Mall and apparently his GPS wasn’t able to give him the directions. I am a visual guy so I ended up drawing a map on an index card and talked him through the right/left turns needed. (Yeah, I just happen to carry index cards with me – inspired by the Hipster PDA.)
Is there any point to this story?
Honestly, I had a tingle of “fight-or-flight” when he first approached me. I guess that it is an automatic reaction built into my system to keep my safe from the boogeyman gangsters in our city. I wasn’t panicking or anything but his looking like Cypher probably didn’t help.
I think that I have always had a bit of FoF response whenever I get approached by strangers. Because I don’t want to provoke an FoF response in other people, I tend not to be so much an initiator in social situations. This is really just plain silly and I should reprogram myself (or de-program if you want to look at it from a different perspective). It probably doesn’t help that my job involves sitting quietly in front of a computer and I am on the computer again when I get home.
Question: is social skills atrophy an issue in the software industry? I know it doesn’t affect everyone to the same degree but I am pretty certain that it can take its toll. I just might have to join Toastmasters again or something to get my mouth moving.
