Agents PLEASE - Don't Start Unsolicited Conversations!

A study conducted by the Stanford University Sociology Department confirms what many in this industry don't seem to grasp;  it’s never okay to just start talking to someone you don’t know. The real estate industry seems to have a hard time with this, recommending that agents continuously and vigorously push their status with anyone they know and don't know in an attempt to secure business. Now this study tends to support what many already know - no one cares and all those trapped with incessant banter wish you would just zip it. This could alter the way motor mouth agents do business while providing those around them an opportunity to enjoy peace and quite.

The report, which analyzed numerous conversations that took place over a nine-month period from September of last year through May, states that approaching a complete and total stranger and saying “Beautiful day,” “That’s nice, where did you get that?” or “Hello” is, under no circumstance, acceptable.

In fact, the study confirmed that in 0 percent of cases do individuals ever want to be spoken to by someone they don’t know, and that it is “downright wrong” to put people who are just going about their day in the awkward position of having to be polite and feign interest in what you—an unknown intruder, essentially—are saying.

The study was very clear, people don't care what you have to say and they will smile, nod and do or say whatever it takes to extricate themselves from the situation.

Just because you are sitting next to someone you don’t know on a bus or airplane, that doesn’t give you any right to talk to that person, even if he or she is reading a book you once read. The study goes on to state that talking to an unfamiliar person in a setting where the individual essentially can’t escape the conversation is “one of the cruelest things one human being can do to another human being.” “Often, the person being talked to will laugh at the other’s jokes,” Gamble said. “This is always fake laughter.”

“If you are an outgoing individual who likes striking up conversations with strangers, you are a source of constant discomfort in this world, and have nothing to offer but anxiety and pain,” said Dr. Andrea Malcolm, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. “People don’t care that you once owned the same car or cellular phone as them, or that you loved it. They don’t care about your opinion one way or the other. They just want you to stop making their lives a living hell.”

“To them,” Malcolm continued, “you might as well be a crazy person, because why are you talking to someone you don’t even know?”

This might be tough to read and even tougher to do...but enough already, the data suggests that people just don't care. See the full report here.