Yes when nobody is at the register. I know its a great opportunity for improvement in social skills and in fact have noticed an improvement (though i have also noticed some things i find very annoying about some social conventions)
I was a cashier for a while with a shift that went from 5 PM to 11 PM, which took from “super busy” to almost dead. I used the late night time dead zones to work on writing projects. I don’t know that I ever did anything all that productive with the few minutes of downtime you periodically got in busier sections.
I don’t have recommendations for mental exercises. Are there mental exercises that you normally do, or are you assuming that mental exercises are valuable things you should be working on, and this seemed like a good place to do it? My belief is that 90% of the rationality that’s worth learning is done by doing stuff, not thinking about stuff. (Or rather, thinking about stuff while you’re doing it).
There’s plenty I find annoying about social conventions, but I actually took the opportunity at the register to practice subverting them for comedic effect[1]. Learning when and how to skirt social rules is a valuable (and fun) skill. Although in truth, you should probably self-modify to treat social conventions like a game with interesting rules to learn—you’re going to have to adapt to them one way or another. A lot of the time you can get away with subverting them if you project confidence and understand the meta-rules that led to them in the first place. But another lot of the time, you really, really need to be following the regular scripts or you’re going to be shooting yourself in the foot and no amount of complaining about the irrationality of the world is going to help you.
[1] Comedy in particular is a valuable skill and the checkout line is a great place to practice it.
Yes when nobody is at the register. I know its a great opportunity for improvement in social skills and in fact have noticed an improvement (though i have also noticed some things i find very annoying about some social conventions)
I was a cashier for a while with a shift that went from 5 PM to 11 PM, which took from “super busy” to almost dead. I used the late night time dead zones to work on writing projects. I don’t know that I ever did anything all that productive with the few minutes of downtime you periodically got in busier sections.
I don’t have recommendations for mental exercises. Are there mental exercises that you normally do, or are you assuming that mental exercises are valuable things you should be working on, and this seemed like a good place to do it? My belief is that 90% of the rationality that’s worth learning is done by doing stuff, not thinking about stuff. (Or rather, thinking about stuff while you’re doing it).
There’s plenty I find annoying about social conventions, but I actually took the opportunity at the register to practice subverting them for comedic effect[1]. Learning when and how to skirt social rules is a valuable (and fun) skill. Although in truth, you should probably self-modify to treat social conventions like a game with interesting rules to learn—you’re going to have to adapt to them one way or another. A lot of the time you can get away with subverting them if you project confidence and understand the meta-rules that led to them in the first place. But another lot of the time, you really, really need to be following the regular scripts or you’re going to be shooting yourself in the foot and no amount of complaining about the irrationality of the world is going to help you.
[1] Comedy in particular is a valuable skill and the checkout line is a great place to practice it.
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I actually didn’t usually bother being subtle (there’s lot you can get away with, period, if you’re confident).
Not assuming that i should work on exercises its that i want to.