I need to start remembering to remember to pay attention to people. I don’t know why I do this, but the minute a client leaves, I completely forget what he or she looks like, and then I don’t know who to look for when I bring the dog out to them when they come back.
Dogs are super-helpful to me with this. They always know their owners, so when I forget I simply follow their lead and act as if I knew exactly who we were headed for, even when the waiting room is full. Still, it doesn’t solve the issue, and I know it’s a problem, or someday it inevitably will be.
It’s like something just shuts off in my brain when I talk to people and I forget to even notice the person, only focusing on their dog. I know that I appear to pay attention to people, and I do pay attention to what they say, but their appearance never seems to register with me.
I believe it is some kind of social anxiety coping mechanism I’ve developed. I look at you, I converse with you, I even laugh and joke with you, but I’m totally not seeing you. After you leave I may remember that you were older or younger or male or female, but not much more than that. If there is something particularly striking about you, like you are crippled or morbidly obese or Japanese, I will probably also remember that. You kind of need to smack me with the obvious stick.
I have read the little memory tricks and mind-association strategies to remember people’s names and faces. I know it. I intend to use it. But I don’t. When the time comes to practice the tricks, I forget to do it.
The irony? In college I was a communications major.
Love the end of this, so funny!
I, too, totally forget people. We went to a garage sale on our street last summer and I introduced myself to someone and asked who they were . . . my husband laughed uncomfortably because it was our next door neighbor. It still makes me laugh. God, I looked like such an asshole.
LOL, pamajama, that is exactly the kind of thing I would do! Nice to know I’m not alone.
Oh, wow, I’ve never addressed this but that’s exactly like ME! I am so not attentive to other people’s looks. As an artist I always thought that was weird, considering that “seeing” is so important to my medium but still I can’t tell you what someone looks like from day to day either!
If you find a solution, please share it with me.
Me and names. I can meet someone somewhere, say at the golf course, and by the time I’ve turned around to look at my clubs, I’ve forgotten their names.
I’m not sure if it’s simply a fact that deep down I don’t care, or whether it’s because I lack some short-term memory function.
Probably the former.
This makes sense to me, you are focusing on what you LOVE, the dog’s. The owners are secondary to you
I have a hard time remembering names too, I usually try to associate that person with someone I know with the same name and it usually works out.