I've had some success at making friends periodically. Wearing a smile and engaging in small chit-chat with cashiers and clerks, sometimes brings about friendship, or at the very least, someone that smiles back when you run into them.
It must have been about 10 years ago when I realized the benefits of being kind and curteous to anyone "waiting on" me, whether it be at the gas station, grocery store or fast food place. It helps that I have a regiment, regular places that I stop and shop. My gas station sees me there every two or three days, as well as my local grocery store.
It's pretty easy to try for yourself. I never intended to make friends and meet with them outside of their workplace or become facebook friends, but it has happened more than a few times.
Maybe it helps that I'm naturally a nice and kind person and that I live in a small town and run into the same faces every week. Don't get me wrong, I have my high sensory overload/ anxiety days where I avoid, avoid, avoid but that's okay. I choose not to interact on those days.
Going to the grocstore has become easier now that I can exchange smiles and chatter with similarly nice people.
My theory is that everyone is doing the best they can. Having been a cashier and clerk myself, I really valued and looked forward to those customers that smiled back. It's not the clerks fault when the store is running shorthanded and the lines are long. I'm not in so much of a hurry these days, that I can't exchange pleasantries, however brief, to those everyday helpers.
Be nice, smile when you can...you never know, you just may make a friend.
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