I met a friend of mine for lunch one time, and while we were talking someone he knew approached us and started chatting, it was kind of ignorant and he didn't seem to care that we were in the middle of a conversation and he started telling us about his life story.
While trying to listen to this buffoon, which was really quite difficult, he kept dropping names of the people in his story, their first and last names and where he knew them from. It was like a phone book had started reading its pages. This made the conversation almost impossible to listen to, the guy kept pausing trying to remember a name or a place that was supposed to be relevant to his story.
I gritted my teeth as he babbled on, stringing more and more pieces of useless information together, I wondered if he thought this tactic was adding credibility to his story. I sat patiently, my mind ignoring what he was saying as I focused on the posters on the wall of the restaurant.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse he started listing off the types and years of the vehicles that the people owned in his story.
He blurted out a few vehicles and years before I lost my mind and stopped him mid sentence, "Does this story have a point?" I asked as I cut him off and caught him off guard at the same time. He looked at me completely stunned, and was silent for a second, so I proceeded to tell him that the friend I was with hadn't seen each other for a while and we wanted to catch up before we had to go our separate ways and basically told him to piss off in the nicest way I could.
My friend had a broad smile on his face as his arrogant acquaintance walked back to the other side of the restaurant. He leaned in close and said "Thank you, I hate that guy." I shook my head and we both laughed.
The guy who was telling the story put in so much useless information that it made whatever tale he was trying to spit out completely irrelevant. It was annoying and made both my friend and I uncomfortable. If he had stuck to the basics of his story and got to the root of the matter maybe he would have more friends and people wouldn't avoid him.
I don't care who Bob Johnson and his ruby red 1986 Grand Prix is, I do not know the person therefore do not care that you do. Keep your useless information to yourself unless someone specifically asks you for it.
Scott Goerz
