The Aquaintence You Anger By Accident

It’s happened to everyone. The friendly acquaintance you only somewhat know from class, the person you see at work pass through and say hi to a lot, we all have them. They come and go, but not always smoothly. Let me introduce you to the classic “misheard in the bar” situation. It’s the usual night, a Thursday or Saturday, and you head there with your friends. Running around saying hello to this person and that person, you will progressively run by a number of these class acquaintances. Eventually, you will come across one who you have a few things to talk about with. While the music blares everyone’s ears to death, you try shouting the conversation along anyway.

You: “So something something inaudible-that project-loud base-hope I get a job.”

Them: *Nodding* “Oh yea! That class really———major again?”

You: “Finance! Something something-job search-something something-well see ya.”

As you walk away, you’re like yeah, I just talked to them, bein’ all social n stuff. Mingling around the group of people you know well enough to not need to make small talk with, you feel your phone buzz. If you’re a vibrate typa person. Otherwise you find this message the next day or way later. Regardless, it will look something like:

Them: “Never talk to me again!”

My experience was actually being told not to speak with a girl AND her friend who was not even around at the time. So after you read it and finish scratching your head, it might be time to think of something to say back. I was pretty mad at this, but remembering that I didn’t actually say anything, messaged back with some classic “sorry this is a big misunderstanding” while trying to theorize what exactly they thought was said. After two days of accepting that I would probably never talk with that person again and coming to terms with it, I got the message saying “sorry! don’t even know what happened or what that was about!” and got to do a nice eye roll at my Facebook messenger. If there’s one thing this taught me, it’s actually nothing new. People who drink do crazy stuff, including releasing aggressive pent up anger that they have had stewing for who knows how long at whatever target presents itself. The bottom line though, is that you should not let stuff like this bother you. It’s someone you barely know anyway. Who cares? Thinking about this for more than 10 minutes was the biggest mistake. Try and blow it off when it happens!

 

-Jim