The cashier at the liquor store seems to really hate me and I can’t figure out why.

I live in a small town and there are only a handful of stores in the whole town, one of them is liquor store, subway, and gas station all in one. It’s not really a very good store by many mattress, but I’m pretty much have to go there are a couple times a week routinely unless I want to drive half an hour to the “city.”

Anyway, I don’t even really remember the details of the first interaction but I feel like I said something that rubbed her the wrong way, trying to be friendly, trying to make a joke or something as is my usual style as I tend to be very outgoing and always try to start conversations with people. Most people I get along with pretty well, and I tend to form at least superficial connections fairly easily. Most people open up to me and share a little about their day or their life or their concerns. I’m always studying social techniques and paradigms and tend to read books on things like listening and conflict resolution. I work as an attorney so all of that is relevant to my work, and I find that I’m generally quite good at making people comfortable dealing with very difficult questions in a professional setting, but socially I have always been completely inept. I struggle with boundaries, in terms of attachment I am clearly anxious avoidant, and I do in fact have several legitimate mental health diagnoses, and may or may not be on the autism spectrum but because of where I get my treatment it’s not an option to even ask.

So yeah, basically I usually do OK with people superficially and just struggle to form close connections. However, with this one individual, I can’t even get a smile. Any attempt I ever make to engage her is instantly shut down. She won’t make eye contact, she exchanges zero pleasantries, she cards me every time (I have gray hair), and she is incredibly terse in issuing commands to me about payment. I don’t think she is just a sour person in general, because I have seen her shouting and laughing with other people there, I think her friends who just come to the store to hang out. On one occasion I got the impression that she might be upset at me for interrupting her social time to do business. But I wasn’t able to get anywhere with that.

I understand that not everyone in the world Hass to be my friend, people don’t owe me their social attention etc. But this is a small town and someone that I see rather often who would be very difficult for me to altogether avoid.

My real worry is there is some actual offense here that I somehow owe an apology for. Small town, again, and even if I don’t need to be friends with this person I definitely don’t need to be the center of rumors and accusations. In the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder if maybe she thought I was hitting on her the first time I met her and tried to be friendly. She is a relatively young woman and I am a middle-aged man; I could imagine that if she thought I was hitting on her she could find me to be a creep. But I definitely didn’t hit on her, I am pretty sure I behave the way I do with everyone which is to say hello and try to say something funny and I may or may not have even told her my name and that I’m new in town. That would’ve been last summer, but I’ve been going to the store more often lately as I am trying to get out of the habit of driving into the city so often.

I guess I really just don’t know where to start with this one. She has not responded in any real way into any attempt I have made to start any kind of conversation. She basically just shuts up and looks away, and only engages in the absolute bare minimum required interaction, i.e. scanning my food and ID and telling me to push the credit card button. She doesn’t respond at all to things like how’s your day going, hello, thanks, see you next time, etc.

And I really do think it’s just me, because she seems to interact normally with everybody else before and after me in the store. I can’t identify anything out of the ordinary about my own behavior relative to anyone else there, except again the fact that I’m relatively new to the town. It’s quite likely that everyone else I see her interact with she’s known for years. So do I just need to accept that I am a social nonentity until I’ve been there for five or six years? Should I in fact make any effort at all to try to engage her, or just leave when I see that she’s there? She’s there basically all the time. So that’s kind of not a great option. I honestly don’t know why introspectively this bothers me so much, but it’s like there’s this dark negative energy that descends upon me when I enter the space that she’s in. It makes me feel really unwelcome and more than a little uneasy.