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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

It also establishes the fundamental fact "This is a friendly conversation".

If I walk into my subordinate's office right now and say "Have you finished that graph yet?" then that communicates that I'm really impatient about getting that graph. Which would be fine if I am, but I'm not. If I do that, I'll just make him jumpy and anxious.

Instead I'll wander down to his office and start with a "Hey, how's it going?" before asking about the graph, cuz I'm not actually impatient to get it, I'm just interested to know whether he's making progress or whether there's anything I need to help him with. The smalltalk is basically just equivalent to "I come in peace".

If I were a gorilla I'd probably have to do this with gestures and facial expressions, but since I'm a human I have this extra tool in my arsenal to communicate the non-threatening nature of my approach. Awesome!

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Here's the problem with that. After you've done this a few times, we start to associate you saying hi with you asking about some project, and begin to distrust your friendliness. Intentions tend to shine through.

"Hello Peter, whats happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow."

That is how we introverts see it.

So instead of asking a 5 second question and letting him get back to work, you turn it into a 5 minute demonstration of your superiority by forcing him to pay attention to you instead of what he was doing.

More like a one-minute interaction which communicates a lot more stuff in subtext than a five-second interaction could hope to... including the fact that I'm not scary and that he should feel free to ask me for help if he needs it.

I know one of the responses jokingly referenced Office Space, but it honestly seems like a few people have suffered that kind of work environment and it's affected their perception of things like this.

In that situation, I too would prefer the introvert's preferences. But it's far from an ideal situation.

When a manager starts off with small talk, it only increases my anxiety more than any straight question ever would. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I've seen the pattern in every job I've had before my current one and with most teachers and professors I've met. They start off talking about something unrelated only to hit you with a hammer with the next question.

Out of place small talk doesn't actually help people that are perspective enough to realize you want something. My experience has been that when a manager randomly starts a conversation that's not work related when it's not lunch or break time they are going to be asking or demanding things I won't like. Infinitely so when they just called you into their office.

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