Listen To Him!

The wife of a corporate executive often was called upon to attend cocktail parties with her husband. This was a problem for her because she hated cocktail parties. In her own words, “I abhor cocktail parties. When I go to one, not only am I nervous about people drinking and then going out to drive their cars, but also I am turned off by the level of the conversation: people chattering away at each other but nobody really listening to what the other is saying.” She went on to describe a little game she played at one such party:

I found myself talking to a corporate vice-president whom I had not previously met. He began speaking to me above the noisy chatter all around us, talking by the numbers, so to speak. He asked me questions about where I lived and how did I like it there, although he obviously wasn’t the least bit interested. As he was going through the motions in this…