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| First impressions |
How do
you feel when you walk around the city you live in? Over 90% of us in the UK
do, and that means that everyday you have to (gahhhhh) talk to people. Or at least interact with them in a semi sane
manner in order to achieve whatever you happen to be walking around in order to
do. Now, we all know that first impressions greatly influence other’s opinions
of your, and that leads into the way that they treat you. Apparently, this
happens within 3 seconds of someone meeting you, and is hard to break once they’ve
made their decision. And unless you literally walked up to them swearing madly,
or dragged yourself across the floor to them courtesy of your whisky legs, this
decision is almost always subconscious. Which is exactly why that impression is so hard to break.
I am
going somewhere with this, I promise. And contrary to what you may think, it
won’t be an empowering and uplifting series of tips to improve your social
standing. This is about what life is like when the first impression you give on
the street is always “I’llllll just cross the road”. This is largely
perpetuated by my typical coat always having a massive murdery black hood (can
a hood be murdery? I’m gonna come back to that.), a resting bitch face and a
sharp intolerance for the walking speed of tourists. Accordingly, this impression
propagates some hilarious interactions that I am pretty sure I wouldn’t get if
I walked about in a flower dress or a Gucci power suit. Below are some of these…
A few
years ago, I was walking around in a shop in Camden, and I couldn’t help but notice
that the shop attendant had left the main front desk and was not so subtly
sidling after me around the shop. I realized my hood was still up (it was a
cold day), and took it down so as to relax the attendant. I mean, how many
robbers or shoplifters voluntarily remove an aspect of their clothing that would
partially obscure their identity? I actually don’t think they’ve done a study
on that. This guy wasn’t having it though. He kept on right behind me, to the
exclusion of the shop front where multiple people could have strode out with
their shopping and were instead impatiently toe tapping at the front desk in an
expanding queue. He got so close, that once I backtracked slightly to take a
second look at something that caught my eye, and he honestly had to leap
backwards so that I didn’t step on him. Eventually, exasperated, I turned to
him and said:
“Look,
I’m just trying to browse. Do I look like a shoplifter or something??”
He didn’t
miss a beat, and without dropping his gaze, he said:
“Yeah,
you do, actually”.
!!!
Well, what could I do? I harrumphed a bit, and then stomped out onto the
street.
Since
then, I have had to just put up with being on the radar of security guards and
shop attendants, despite NEVER STEALING A
GODDAMN THING IN MY LIFE. But it isn’t just in shops that people make
assumptions about your character.
I
remember once finishing the last of a seven-day series of ten-hour night
shifts, facing the truly terrible prospect of readjusting my body clock back
the time normal people function. I decided, in my lunacy, to walk to my nearest
main town in order to give myself more exposure to the daylight that should
reconfigure my circadian rhythms as well as a low intellect activity (window
shopping) to try and stimulate my (by then atrophying) brain. The walk was
about half an hour, and all on pavement with a few crossings. I became lulled
into the dull cadence of putting one foot in front of another, staring at my
feet and trying not to microsleep. I came to a crossing that was green for me,
and started to cross. Then ZZZOOOOOM! I dodged back, and only just avoided
being run over by this car by a fraction of a hair.
“Hey!”
I bellowed, shocked out of my stupor. “It was green for me!!!”
This
guy screeched to a stop, leaned out of his window, and yelled:
“Look
at you! You’re smacked out of your head!” Fucking junkie!!” Then span his
wheels angrily and zoomed off. Leaving me standing in the street, really
confused, like:
“Maybe
I look more tired than I thought" 0.o
The
second part of my terrible first impression record is the assumption that I’m being
rude, angry, giving attitude or talking down to people. Here are a few
misunderstandings that I’ve had:
-
Telling a customer that I didn’t have the report she needed
just yet, but I would be happy to chase it up for her and call her back. Being
told I need to check my attitude. I…huh?
-
Running back to a café where I had accidentally left my
water bottle, told it had been chucked, fleeting sadface resulting in massive
diatribe about it not being their fault. Ok, fine?
-
Being called a ‘robot’ by an old colleague after I
asked her for an item I needed for my job that she was in a position to provide
(it was definitely meant as an
insult, but I’m claiming it as positive).
Now, I’m
aware that at the core of it, the common denominator in all of these situations
is me. I have a stereotypical Chav style outwards appearance I guess, and am rarely
bothered about dressing up for the streets. Having shaved my head recently, my
appearance veers even more in that direction, although I suppose it falls within
the more traditionally masculine iteration of that social class.
But
that shouldn’t matter. Should it? I dress up for interviews and special occasions.
I attend work and university to schedule. I pay bills. I spend my extra money
on travel instead of clothes. I do almost everything that most people who
consider themselves productive citizens would do. Except support the idea that I need to look a certain way in order
to be respectable. (spoiler: I don’t even look that alt, except for my shaved head.)
But sometimes
I wonder, should I simply conform to gain that initial first impression
interaction bonus? That person whose heads snaps up to talk to me, and not
because they think I’m going to nick their crappy £20 cotton trousers?
Nahhh,
fuck it. I think I’m going to stay myself. At least I get more funny stories
that way.
Flatt7 (bleep bloop bleep bloop)
Ps. From
Googling, I don’t think murdery hoods are a thing. But they should be. They sound
cool.
