On Friday I had another moment of witnessing an engineer propagate the stereotype that we're a bunch of anti-social neanderthals.
As I was walking to the physics building for a lab, I was walking behind this chubby mouth-breather who, by the exhausted look on his face, hasn't walked that far unless he was pressing the 'w' key. Just before the building, a polite red-head asked him for directions to the same physics building. If she had of asked me, I would of said something along the lines of "I'll do you one better and take you there!" because I'm a human and am not allergic to conversation. But even though he was going there, he only offered a wave of the hand in the general direction and what I would describe as being a phonetic grunt.
Since they were now physically next to each other and walking to the same building, it would be awkward to not make some small talk. Of course, this guy somehow failed at even that. She tried a few times to talk, but only got one-word replies. As they were walking, he did his best to either walk a few feet back (the creepy breathing-down-your-neck stalker distance) or a few feet ahead of her. I was shaking my head the whole time, since it was so awkward. I mean, you have to TRY to fail so badly at being socially normal!
