One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was in the supermarket check-out line in 2018. The cash register and receipt printer had both somehow simultaneously jammed. While the cashier momentarily abandoned her post to locate a manager, those in line turned to polite chit-chat. Once the typical topics were covered — today's weather, tomorrow's predicted weather — talk turned to the contents of people's carts and baskets.
"Hey, whose birthday is it?" asked a chatty man who kept shifting a jumbo bag of organic dog food from under one arm to the other, gesturing with his empty hand towards a sprinkle-covered birthday cake in a gray-haired woman's cart.
