I like to think I’m a pretty socially conscious person. I’m generally good at picking up on social cues, I make consistent eye contact when I talk to people, and I try my best to be engaging. All that falls apart, however, when it comes to one very simple social situation: saying hi to friends on the street.
At Harvard, as I’m sure is the case at most U.S. colleges, people are really friendly. As a result, there’s a well-ingrained culture of saying “hi” to your friends and acquaintances when you pass by them on the street. On the one hand, this can be great; college is stressful, and seeing a familiar, cheery face between classes can make a tough day feel better. Yet, somehow, the perfect combination of ambiguous social norms and general miscommunication seems to make the simple act of waving hello to someone between classes one of the more stressful parts of my day.
Part of the problem is that it can be hard to tell who will be receptive to a greeting. Because the undergraduate population isn’t too big and because most classes are concentrated in a very small area of the campus, on any given day you tend to pass by quite a lot of people you sort of know—key word being “sort of.” These people range anywhere from that guy you sat with once in the dhall freshman year to your roommates and closest friends, and everyone in between.
Which of these people will acknowledge your presence and wave back at you is incredibly inconsistent. There are people I’ve sat next to in class for a whole semester and had many conversations with who barely acknowledge my presence when I walk past them in the street. There are people I tutored once at the writing center two years ago who enthusiastically wave and shout my name when I walk by them. There are people I lived on the same floor as for an entire year who don’t even return my polite half-smile in the elevator, but there are people who I met once through a friend of a friend who always ask me how I’m doing when we see each other in the Yard.
And it’s not even necessarily related to the individual’s personality, either. There are shy people who always smile at me when we pass by. There are also extroverted people who act as if they don’t know I exist, despite the fact that we’ve met multiple times before. I suppose some people are just better at remembering faces than others, and some people have different standards for whom they would consider a friend, as opposed to just a stranger they’ve met a couple times. Still, it feels weird to wave at someone you’re sure you know only to get a confused look in response.
Now let’s say the other person does say “hi” back to you. Do you now ask “How’s it going?” Do you stop and have a conversation? Do you keep walking? Sometimes I keep walking and the other person looks hurt that I didn’t want to have a conversation with them in the middle of the street. Other times, I stop and the other person is utterly confused why I’m insisting on interacting further. Again, it’s inconsistent.
Beyond social norms, though, it’s also just generally very difficult to disentangle whether a person has ignored you on the street because they didn’t see you, because they don’t remember you, or because they don’t like you. Maybe it’s because I’m short or maybe it’s my generic white guy look, but this week alone I’ve had at least two such confusing instances. Both times, I thought someone I knew pretty well was waving at me, so I waved back and tried to strike up a conversation, only to find they were actually waving to someone else directly behind me and didn’t notice me at all. Some people try to avoid this issue by saying the other person’s name out loud, but even then sometimes their friend doesn’t hear them. They end up having to shout the name loudly three more times to get the individual’s attention—a lose-lose situation because it’s awkward to be ignored, but it’s also awkward to aggressively yell someone’s name across the street three times.
It’s only fair, of course, that I admit I’m just as much a part of the problem as all the individuals in these examples. I mess up and don’t see people all the time. Sometimes it’s because I have my headphones in and don’t hear them say my name; other times it’s because I’m deep in my thoughts while walking between classes. At one point, I even had such a bad streak of accidentally ignoring people when they would wave to me that I actually had a reputation within my EMS organization as the rude guy who doesn’t say hi to anyone on the street. The double pressure of both noticing and being noticed makes the basic act of saying hi to someone all the more stressful.
I recognize that an easy fix to the issue as a whole could be to just always wave when I see someone I’ve met before. Even if they don’t remember me exactly, they’ll probably appreciate it. After all, it doesn’t hurt to be a little extra friendly, right? And if they don’t respond, I shouldn’t take it personally because they probably didn’t see me or they were just confused. If I trust that everyone usually makes this same judgment, I don’t have to worry about offending anyone else, either, if I happen to not see them.
Unfortunately, this kind of strategy can become emotionally exhausting pretty quickly. As much as I’d like to not care what people think, it does start to feel a little embarrassing and even disheartening when you’ve waved at three people in a row and none of them have responded. When you’re constantly on the look-out for people you know, greetings also start to feel less organic, and ultimately less satisfying.
My strategy now is a modified version of this old approach. If I recognize someone on the street, instead of full-on waving or saying anything, I usually first try to make eye contact. Assuming I’m successful, I next give a subtle half-smile. I wait for the other person to acknowledge my smile—ideally by waving or saying hello—then I go in all in by waving, saying hi back, and sometimes even asking “How’s it going?” I’ve found this approach makes it more likely that the other person will acknowledge me. The delayed commitment to saying hello aloud makes being ignored feel less bad, too.
But while this solution works pretty well for gauging when (and how enthusiastically) to greet someone, there’s still one problem for which I have yet to find a good solution. One of my biggest pet peeves is walking with someone down the street and being interrupted by them every five seconds because they’re stopping to say hi to everyone and anyone they recognize along the way.
It’s one thing to subtly wave at someone you know while another person is talking to you. And if you truly have something important you need to tell a friend who just passed by, I’d say it’s even fair game to cut the person you were just talking to off so you can catch your friend’s attention. But when the interruptions are so frequent I can’t even get a full sentence out to you without you already looking in another direction and shouting hi to someone else, it just becomes rude. Why did you even start walking with me and ask how my day was if you had no intention to actually listen to the answer?
Don’t get me wrong, most days I’m thankful to know so many people on campus and to have so many friends greet me on my walk to class. It makes an otherwise large and sometimes intimidating institution feel a lot more homey. I also get that all of this—from the ambiguous social norms to the fear of rejection and the pet peeve surrounding listening—is totally a first world problem, and one that I’m probably overthinking at that. Still, with the first day of classes having just gone by this week, the etiquette around saying hello to people on the street has been on my mind quite a bit that I felt this topic finally warranted a post.
Have any thoughts on (or tips for) navigating the walk to class? Share them below in the comments!
On Ariel's Mind 