I approached a woman at Barnes and Noble. I went up to her and said "Hi, I don't think we've met, I'm Will." She kinda looked at me funny and said "hi." I said, "oh, sorry if that was weird, I just like talking to people and being friendly. What's your name?" She told me her name, then I asked her what she did. She said "I really just want to read this book." I saw that it was a wedding book, so I asked "oh, are you planning a wedding?" Her: "Yeah, it's for a friend." Me: "That's cool, when are they getting married." At this point, she just ignored me, so I waited a few seconds, then said "Ok." and walked away. I was really struck at how rude this woman was to someone that was trying to be friendly.
I feel like you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat random strangers. It's not someone that is in your life and that can do things for you, so kindness is truly an act of altruism (well, not entirely, because pure altruism is rare, but that's another topic.) I think people that treat strangers poorly, even if they are kind to the people in their lives, that says something about them. Somewhere, deep down, they are not as nice as they appear.
And you might retort by saying "yeah, well she said she just wanted to read the book and you kept talking to her!" True, but it's not like she was sitting somewhere reading, so was standing in the aisle. Also, during our conversation, she put the book back on the shelf. Regardless, that's no excuse to be rude to someone.
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