One of my favorite hobbys is judging others. I call it "people watching" in polite company. Truly, I do enjoy it.
Carry on.
> One of my favorite hobbys is judging others. I call it "people watching" in polite company. Truly, I do enjoy it.
>
> Carry on.
I enjoy watching the "nosey" neighbors trying to look nonchalant when they want to know what the survey crew is doing next door. It's a hoot. I can appreciate folks that just plainly ask "whatcha doin' ?"...and I can appreciate folks trying to be discreet also.
The funniest is the "peek-through-the-window-blinds" routine. You can see the blinds crack a little as they spy on you. Then when you look at the window, the crack suddenly disappears!
Humans are a diverse herd to watch. It is indeed entertaining.
I don't mind "Whatcha doin'" near as much as "can I help you?". I don't know why, it just rubs me the wrong way.
🙂
"Can I help you". On a really bad day, a lady asked me that while we were working on a terrible survey. I replied, "No you can't". She walked away never to bugg us again.
Airports are a great place for people watching. Everyone from the richest to the poorest all blend together into a lovely mixture of entertainment for the casual observer.
As for people watching us survey, I grow weary of it quickly despite always attempting to keep a friendly smile on my face and a social tone in my voice. One project this week has us in a neighborhood where too many people are home at 11:00 a.m. and most of them have a strong dislike for at least one of their neighbors.
I usually just say "No thanks, I've got it".
Last week I was locating some subdivision property corners along the road ROW line. Next to each monument is a steel fence post with a piece of 2" dia. white PVC pipe sleeved over the post which stood about 5' tall as a marker post. These have been there since the subdivision was laid out in 2006. Woman in a new SUV drives past and stares as she drives up to her $400K house. Then she immediately came back and demanded to know what I was doing and why I was setting those tall ugly white stakes in her yard. I guess she was always too busy to notice them before.
Maybe she had been seeing those PVC pipes for a long time, hated them, and finally found the culprit: YOU!
🙂
N
> I don't mind "Whatcha doin'" near as much as "can I help you?". I don't know why, it just rubs me the wrong way.
>
> 🙂
"Can I help you?" is a very polite way of asking what the he11 are you doing poking around my backyard/front yard and why didn't you take the time to contact me to let me know in advance.
> One of my favorite hobbys is judging others. I call it "people watching" in polite company. Truly, I do enjoy it.
>
> Carry on.
"judging others" is way above all our pay-grades - if you know what I mean.
As for people watching, as a former frequent flyer I would often book my flights so as to have maximum layovers just for people watching in various places I was heading to and from and as many points in between. It became easy to tell who was the experienced traveler and who was the "nervous Nellie" without a clue. Often times I would get a couple hours ahead of time just to have a beer or 2 and people watch. It's all big soap opera with an endless loop.
On one flight back to ATL I met some girl (VERY gorgeous) going to Washington DC coming from S. America (Columbia I think). She was seated next to me. She didn't speak a word of English but I spoke enough of her Spanish that we could talk some. She was clueless and nervous and felt at ease with me being the experienced traveler at the time. I suppose that I was giving an effort to try to communicate best I could helped. We de-planed in Atlanta at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport (a huge place and somewhat overwhelming for those who haven't been there). I was heading home and she was transferring to another flight and had no clue how that works. I started walking away heading to my car somewhere and we waived at each other and the look on her face said something else "please help me! I'm lost!". Instead of heading straight home (I'd been gone for several weeks) I went back and got her and lead her to a gate attendant explaining her plight and she needed some help to get her on her way.
I stayed with her until they could get someone who spoke her proper Spanish-Spanish and could do some "proper" translating. I left her in good hands and we hugged and she kissed me as I left.
Yeah... way to go BigE.. I should have booked a flight right then and escorted her the rest of the way. I was a free-spirit and had plenty of money to do that back then. I was really missing to get back to my house otherwise there would probably be a whole bunch of little Big Es running around.
Leave it me to not strike while the iron was hot. And HOT she was. Carmilla if I recall.
Oh well. Now I'm relegated to be a hermit and play with my model trains.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it - besides it 100% true.
E.
I've always tried to put myself in their shoes, and know if I were the property owner with someone digging up my back yard I'd be concerned. I always offer them a business card (you do supply your field crews with business cards, right??), say which lot I'm doing by parcel ID (a little technospeak goes a long way, NEVER identify the client by name) and try to answer any questions they may have in a polite manner.
I get a lot of folks calling the office to verify I'm who I say I am, and have even gotten some additional business down the road because of it. Then again, if someone who looked like me was in my back yard, I'd be suspicious. Damn suspicious.
For the win, was flying from Las Vegas to Atlanta once. I observed a lady with a twin stroller and a 5 year old on a leash, with three bags on rollers all strung together. She was hands down the most squared away woman I'd seen in an airport, had a 6 month old and a 18 month old in the stroller, was talking nonstop on her cell phone and was moving the entire parade down the concourse like she owned it.
Turned out we were on the same flight, and the 5 year old sat next to me on the plane. When he got fussy, she swapped seats, gave him his snack and a juicebox, and he was sound asleep in ten minutes.
Her husband was a captain in the USMC, she was also a Marine brat and veteran of a hundred TDY's in her lifetime. In her spare time she was a full time nursing student and wanted to specialize in pediatric oncology, as her older brother was a cancer survivor and she really admired the people who took care of him.
Very few people I've interacted with for less than 6 hours have ever impressed me as much as she did. When we landed in Atlanta, I offered to help her and she declined, said "I got this", and she did.
What you call polite I call passive aggressive. I always contact the adjacents, was wondering when someone would mention that, usually the best way to survey a lot is to survey the whole block. I'm not contacting everyone on the block...
One of my guilty pleasures.;-)
Airports, bus stations, hospital E/Rs, Downtowns, Hawaii, St. Louis, Toronto, etc... have yielded some interesting "folks." B-)
You may be a Pythagorianist.
Ya'll ain't been to Wal-Mart lately.
Check out the YouTube "people of Wal-Mart." Sad.....funny....weird.....and strange!:-D
Everyone from the richest to the poorest all blend together into a lovely mixture of entertainment for the casual observer
How true.
But once I was on same flight as a well dressed lady that was not lightly built.
We were departing the quarantine section and she, in all her importance and with business bag in toe, took off.
Her heels let her down and she went with them, bit the dust and bag burst open.
I and others offered help, but that seemed to further indignify her and she scrambled her stuff together, reclaimed her shoe and proceeded to flee as she had moments before the fall.
I wasn't sure whether to feel more sorry she fell or for what seemed like a declaration of her capabilities as an executive woman out to show the world.
from a different direction: being watched.....
Back when i was surveying (way) more than I do now, my otherwise unoccupied, friendly, and tightwaddish clients would occasionally ask to tag along as i did my thing. they weren't being obnoxious; just genuinely friendly and curious. i would tell them of course, by all means, knowing what would happen. almost every time, that survey would end with a far more enlightened client who suddenly seemed a lot less opposed to writing that (second) check (i always got something up front, and stamped when they squared up). there was always some amazement on their part at seeing the care employed in a properly done survey that met and exceeded minimum standards, and i always enjoyed being watched in that regard.
