You know the type, probably a good father or worker, but serious faced all the time, never smiles, often in a bad mood, very cynical. It’s just I feel like I’m on the path to this, I’m 28, just escaped 12 years of food service so I’m already super cynical and if someone comes up to me, I’m super ready to shut down whatever’s about to happen. I feel like working with customers for years I’ve learned to have giant walls up and I can’t seem to remove them. I see the other guys in the factory I’m working at laughing and joking all the time, I think of myself as funny but it’s always deadpan humor and I wish I could genuinely smile and laugh and make friends with the other guys. Any old timers or well travelers out there have any advice?
Commit to the bit. If you’re deadpan, see if you can keep elaborating on a joke without cracking a smile until it’s so damn silly you’ve got to laugh. People like it, and it’s an easy transition to make for people who have a serious-seeming sense of humor.
Consciously remind yourself that everyone tends to assume that mistakes are caused by inherent properties of people, but sometimes there are fuzzy but real reasons why people say and do dumb stuff- bad day, distracted, etc. Try to give people the slack you’d like them to give you when you get wound up on some dumbass opinion.