For some context, I’ve always been socially inept but I started working at this place a couple of months ago and recently was promoted to a similar position that the person in question has. We’ve been working together for probably four or five nights a week in that entire time but our conversations, which tend to be really brief, as she’s busy doing what she needs to do while I’m doing what I need to, never really go beyond what’s going on at work right here, right now. With my promotion though she’s training me and we’re having our breaks together and have to be pretty much within earshot of each-other the entire night and I think I’m making things really weird.
Here’s my problem, I’ve always been disastrously shy, especially around people I admire and being in a situation where I know she’s watching me to make sure I don’t mess up just makes things many times harder. I’m confident she knows that, she’s helped me out with things knowing that they’ll take time for me to sort them out and get a handle on them without any prompting, and it’s great. What’s weird though is around other people she seems super talkative and outgoing while around me straight from the beginning it’s been the inverse. I don’t know if she’s just aware I’m shy and trying to make me feel comfortable or if she herself is just shy, tired or even just comfortable around me to where she feels she can be quiet. I genuinely don’t know. But I don’t want to alienate her or anything like that, she’s cool as shit and has that presence that I think a lot of people wish they had as she comes across as very confident.
The job is a customer service one and I end up talking to close to two-hundred people per night. Maybe twenty of them will actually talk to you for a couple of minutes and they’re fine, most of the time those people that’ll talk to you are natural talkers anyways so I don’t feel bad for being a listener with them and they probably don’t even know I haven’t said much. Same goes for when I was training someone a few weeks ago, had an eight-hour shift where there wasn’t any silence between the new girl and myself but I also didn’t do much of the talking.
TL;DR – I guess I’m asking, what the fuck do I do? Should I try to get to know her on a more personal level, based off of what I know from others we do share some common interests. Should I bring them up somehow to try and even our interactions out to a level I feel she’s more comfortable with? I feel like it’s kind of weird to do so because of the fact that we haven’t said too much about our personal lives before. Even when we’re alone each night and work’s done we’re both just wanting to go home and sleep so I don’t want to be a pest either.
1 comment
As someone who has always been the quiet type, really the worst that happens is people conclude you’re the quiet type and it’s a bit dull to work with you but that’s about it. People who like to talk typically live quiet types can then they can talk more and they’ll frequently feel they had a great conversation haha. Being a good listener is a positive.
If you haven’t told her how much you respect the help she’s giving you definitely should do that. Authentic gratitude goes a long way.
Finally, you’re not going to be best friends with everyone you work with so it’s okay to have just a good working relationship. A lot better than someone that’s always chatting about nothing or complains.