Is social skill important in YOUR real-life job?

... as an office temp the "absence" of social skills is important. You have to be able to go to a company for several weeks or months and be content to be alone and uncommunicative. Otherwise you won't be able to get any writing and reading done while on the job as people will be constantly stopping by to smooze with you.

Being friendly also results in your getting more work assigned to you I find, whereas if you are asocial and scowl a lot employees leave you alone and tend to avoid you. And oddly, this has no impact on how long a company keeps you on as an employee. Quite the opposite.

Bosses seem to like employees who stay out of their hair, even if they do little to no work, which is okay by me.

I'm a teacher, so yeah definitely. I make an effort to talk to and joke around with the students on a daily basis. I'm much more shy around the teachers, though.

There's only really one teacher I actively work with who drives me insane, and I just try to smile and put up with it. I love my students, even if they never study, and I don't let them get to me.

I think for me it was just a matter of deciding years ago that I wanted to be someone who was pleasant and smiled at work instead of being the really annoying downer who never had anything positive to say. Even when I'm tired and exhausted or sick and feeling like crap, I still go into class with a smile.

There are no secrets. It's just like any other skill--it takes work, practice, learning from mistakes, and persistence. Everyone who teaches has had zipper-down moments (metaphorically speaking), and moments of crisis. Solutions and reactions buy experience, and experience produces confidence. It's as simple AND as complicated as that.

My god yes. In addition to extinguishing fires between developers and other developers, developers and qa, product management and engineering management, and all points in between.... I also do tradeshows, so I hop on a plane, travel for hours and hours, put on uncomfortable shoes and stand on 1/4" cheap carpeting on top of solid concrete (tradeshow floors) for 12 hours a day without lunch talking to customers and engineers....

So yeah if I wasn't a "FUCKING PEOPLE PERSON (tm)" I wouldn't last a week.

I study for flower shop things so so yeah, it is important.

I hate people.

scarletpeaches said:

I hate people.

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Fixed it for you, either to put it in phonetic scottish or to hang on a metaphorical meat hook. Let the reader be the judge.

The fact I never drop my H's should be a big clue.

scarletpeaches said:

I hate people.

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Me too. Well, most. That just means I have to work hard to remember my people skills.

I deal with all kinds of people in my office job. I'm just admin, so I have to cater to needy bosses, make nice with HR to get things done (b/c they don't do their jobs), make nice with a lot of people I don't like at all or don't have respect for in an effort to keep everyone happy. That's my real job - keep everyone else happy.

I like people, despite being afraid of those I don't know. I have a bit of social phobia. However, cultivating trusting and respectful relationships in my job is very important. I have to interview developers and QA to get their professional insight and input on the documentation I write. I have to, in turn, ask them to review and give feedback on my work. It's very important to have an open relationship so we all get what we want, which is to have software features documented thoroughly and accurately.

So, I have to put my shyness and social phobia aside to get the information I need. I've been pretty successful at this so far. I might never have a lunch date, or even a solid friend, at work, but at least I have the respect of the SMEs (subject matter experts) whom I rely on.

I used to work in a dept store and the script you're given is just bollocks. What to say in the morning, what to say in the afternoon, what to say in the evening, how to greet a customer, never apologise for a queue being long, say thank you for waiting...even "Would you like a bag today?" When the hell else would they want a bag? Yesterday? Next week?

I deviated from the script and got told off time and again but as I pointed out to the managers, the customers liked the fact I showed a little - pardon the phrase - spunk.

I can natter to people when I'm left to my own devices. It's all small talk. As long as I'm not expected to socialise with folk, I'm fine, it's all surface chat.

I never went down the pub with my workmates though. If I want friends to hang out with I'll come to AW; I have something in common with you guys. Plus, Mac's willing to put up with me, God love the mad, crazy fool.

I make sure any thoughts of awkward-customer-strangling are kept for later. We run a book on who gets the worst one all week.

scarletpeaches said:

The fact I never drop my H's should be a big clue.

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kiss me
and keep your nibble
to the side of my tongue
that holds my soul,
the border of bitter
and sweet,
and don't complain
of any lack
of tenderness.

I taste of my taste
and nothing more.

I don't know why people annoy me so much. I just answered a call from a very friendly guy, but for some reason, he was too friendly and just really annoying. I don't know what my problem is. There are a lot of people I admire and respect and whose company I enjoy. But...I'd rather be curled up with my SO. I'm glad we're both pretty much introverts.

Alpha Echo said:

I don't know why people annoy me so much. I just answered a call from a very friendly guy, but for some reason, he was too friendly and just really annoying. I don't know what my problem is. There are a lot of people I admire and respect and whose company I enjoy. But...I'd rather be curled up with my SO. I'm glad we're both pretty much introverts.

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Because it's not genuine. People who bullshit to a script are liars. They're insincere. They don't mean a single word they say. They're paid to say it.

scarletpeaches said:

I used to work in a dept store and the script you're given is just bollocks. What to say in the morning, what to say in the afternoon, what to say in the evening, how to greet a customer, never apologise for a queue being long, say thank you for waiting...even "Would you like a bag today?" When the hell else would they want a bag? Yesterday? Next week?

I deviated from the script and got told off time and again but as I pointed out to the managers, the customers liked the fact I showed a little - pardon the phrase - spunk.

I can natter to people when I'm left to my own devices. It's all small talk. As long as I'm not expected to socialise with folk, I'm fine, it's all surface chat.

I never went down the pub with my workmates though. If I want friends to hang out with I'll come to AW; I have something in common with you guys. Plus, Mac's willing to put up with me, God love the mad, crazy fool.

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When I worked retail, which I did for 4 years, I never had to greet customers using a script. I would've HATED that. How stupid. My job was to sell them as many bras and panties as possible, and as long as I did that, and didn't fuck up the cash in the till, all was right with the world.

I did a double take when I saw this thread here.

Didn't realize other Pavlina-ites came here.

Anyway, to the subject of your thread...Engineers are an introverted lot. Most of them keep to themselves and/or have seemingly boring (to me) interests. I, on the other hand, get charged up by social interaction. So it's a dynamic that makes me dislike my job.

I'm an RN in an emergency department so my job is to have whatever social skills are required to get the job done. Sometimes I have to persuade, sometimes I have to be the diplomat and sometimes I have to be bitchy and blunt. I would fail miserably at my work if I didn't know how to be assertive. I would not be a good person to hire for a butt kissing job.

ETA: I have had butt kissing jobs in the past. I can do it if I have to, but there is usually a completely different line of dialogue in my head than the one that is spewing from my lips. (My last job was to translate human speak between engineers and customers who were already pissed off by the time they got to me.)

scarletpeaches said:

Because it's not genuine. People who bullshit to a script are liars. They're insincere. They don't mean a single word they say. They're paid to say it.

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You are right. I really, really hate fake people.

Alpha Echo said:

I don't know why people annoy me so much.

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When I find myself being consistently annoyed by other people, I take a step back and look inside myself. Because I've realized that when most people, most of the time, annoy me, it's usually because I am annoyed with myself in some fashion and I am just projecting that annoyance onto others.

Or maybe it's just that they're bastards.

scarletpeaches said:

Or maybe it's just that they're bastards.

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I object! My father was a known and demonstrable commodity.

scarletpeaches said:

Or maybe it's just that they're bastards.

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Granted, there are some real douche bags out there. I won't say there aren't.

But I'm discovering that I (in my own personal life here) attract to myself people who tell me something about what's going on with myself.

For example, Up until about 9 months ago, I was attracting people who would drain me mentally/physically and people who had major issues. I tainted my view of the world based on those people because it's ALL I ever saw.

Then, I had a huge change of perspective on myself and life in general and suddenly I'm finding people interesting and fun. Have people really changed that much in the 9 or so months that I've been at this? No, not really. But I have. When I changed my perspective and myself, the world around my changed.

I know that sounds cliche and tired and like a load of hot smoke being blown straight up your ass (lol), but it's my personal experience and it's helped me grow quite a bit.

Peach, maybe you should become a nurse. I get to say things at work all the time that most people don't.

Examples:

"Sir, I can either charm you out of your pants or I can take them by force, but either way, they're coming off."

"I know you don't like needles, but you're having a heart attack. If you don't let me do my job you are greatly increasing the likelihood that you will die."

"Listen. If you take that mask off one more time the doctor is going to come in here, drug you into a coma and shove a tube down your throat. I don't want that. You don't want that. Keep the mask on."

And my favorite:

"SECURITY!"



ETA: You probably already use that first one on a regular basis anyway.