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.
Images by Arturo de Albornoz & candrews on Flickr via Creative Commons
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This is an interesting article and question. The last few years, I’ve quit asking people the inevitable “what do you do” or “what do you do for a living?” because I admire cultures where people don’t define themselves by their boring jobs.
Instead, I ask them “What do you spend your time on” or “What do you like to do with your time?”
Usually, they pause for a second, and then look at me again, because they’re not sure how to answer, but they quickly figure out that I’m less interested in their day job than in their interest. Sometimes their day jobs are their chief interests, but sometimes they’re not.
Isaac’s last blog post..“Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences….”
@Isaac – Great comment, exactly the kind of stuff i’m looking for. I’ll have to try that out. Thanks for stopping by.
Speaking as someone who is officially ‘unemployed’ at the moment (long story short, returning from travels last year smack bang into economic recession which is, unsurprisingly, TOUGH to find a job in), I can vouch for the fact that saying you’re ‘unemployed’ makes people verrrrry uncomfortable. So in order not to make them all itchy round the collar, if I’m asked that question I quickly mention the handful of different projects I’m doing which I’m not being paid for, but which make life distinctly more interesting than it was when I DID have a job (before travels)! People want to be able to box you up by what you ‘do’, which will probably start to become increasingly more difficult in the next year or two as redundancies increase and unemployment rises.
I do exactly as Isaac does, and try to find out what this person in front of me is interested in, outside of work…makes for a distinctly more interesting conversation. Either that, or I throw in some wacky questions – ghosts? aliens? anyone??
Alexia’s last blog post..Oh Snow!
@Alexia – I agree that it’s finding out about what the person is interested in. Hope you find a job soon!
I´m always tempted to say the same thing: ” I’m an astronaut. “!!!
Great post Chris!