ok I actually like the "what do you do for work" question, it feels easy to ask interesting followups to that, gives u an efficiently compressed info dump about the person. imma start countersignalling as a bad question asker by using that as my initial go-to
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I think the damage is more the way it changes the tone of the conversation
disposes the other person to enter a somewhat defensive justifying mode that’s full of preset talking points rather than spontaneous generation
spontaneity important in part because it’s more credible
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My least favorite questions are the extremely open-ended generic ones. I remember my mom asking me "say something in Spanish" and I would sit there almost-crying for 5 minutes trying to figure out which thing to say.
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oh mannn why does that sound so stressful
really open ended questions are the laziest version of questions, theyre barely even questions, its like hey im gonna make u do my curiosity for me.
"tell me about yourself" shudder
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“How do you spend your time” is more tactful and accomplishes much of the same (and you won’t miss out if how they spend their time isn’t on their work!)
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I like it because I learn about jobs I've never even heard of, or parts of industries I know nothing about. I'm confused as to why people think it is a bad question. There's a problem if it is the only question or if one uses the answer to judge status.
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