Approaching a Wal Mart girl...

[Unmotivated]

I'm hoping for a bit of advice from someone here. I have been very frustrated the last few years because I feel like a never get a chance to meet any females. I find myself reading into each little look or smile a stranger gives me. I wonder if it means anything.

 

Here's my latest thing:

 

The Wal Mart in Laramie, Wyoming is open 24 hours a day. My friends and I sometimes drive there sometime past midnight to get some food and sodas. The last few times I noticed a girl who works there. She was the greeter (the Wal Mart employee who stands at the entrance and says hi to people) the first time she caught me eye. She's pretty, nice, and seems quite shy. She looks a few years younger than me (I'm 22).

 

Every time we've gone there lately, she has been the only cashier on duty. My friends and I like to goof around a lot and she would smile and laugh. Her and I seemed to sort of avoid eye contact every time she scans my food (I'm a bit shy too), but each time she would look at me and give me the usual "Have a good night." and I couldn't help but wonder if the attraction was mutual. How can I tell? should I just ask her?

 

Pause. The first thing that comes to mind about this is a conversation I overheard in class last semester. A guy was telling someone about how he went to dinner and noticed that the waitress seemed kind of interested in him, and so he asked her out. She basically said no, she'd just got over a relationship and didn't want to start anything. Well, another waitress heard the conversation and told the manager and the guy got banned from the resturant.

 

I certainly don't want that to happen, mostly because it would be rather embarrasing.

 

Anyway, this morning I woke up and kind of rolled around in bed thinking about her and told myself that tonight I was going to go and ask her if she wanted to go to lunch tomorrow. Well, by midnight I was more level-headed and decided that was a bad idea, but I went anyway, just to see her again.

 

She was there, but there was some supervisor-looking guy looking over her shoulder, so I really didn't want to try to chat or anything. Well, I caught a glimpse of her left hand and saw this ring. And not just a regular ring. It looked like a pretty nice one.

 

Here we see my lack on any real social experience. Do girls where rings for the heck of it or only to symbolize a relationship? Should I muster up the courage to ask her out or am I just setting myself up for a big embarrassment?

 

I appreciate any advice anyone can give. Thanks for reading this.

[ArcadianX]

It helps to know what finger the ring was on.

[lonelyd00d]

Dude.. from what I hear. You and I have the exact same problem. Heh. Doesn't mean I can help much, tho, I'm afraid. Since I don't go out a lot (in the disco/bar/pub sense.. I hate it), I don't really have a whole lot of 'real' contact with girls my age. So, when I do like someone, it's usually a girl at a store or restaurant of some kind. Very hard to approach, anyway. After all, they're supposed to be nice and smile at you. And you could be just another customer to her.

 

You can look up some of my older messages on this board about a girl at the local theatre I really liked (at least, I think I posted about that here). But that turned out to be a somewhat embarrassing and painful experience, but I learned a lot from it. We're good friends now. A while ago, she even came over to my place with a friend of hers. And yes, she's still cute, but I'm not having any feelings for her anymore. Which, imo, made this friendly gettogether possible. Girls have like a 6th sense for these things. If I had still 'wanted' her, I'm sure she would've kept her distance.

 

At the moment, I have a slight interest in a girl at a chinese restaurant.. this came to be when I went to order some food there to go, I walked accross her, and looked her right in the eyes (I'm over my shyness that way, finally), and she gave me a big smile, which I returned, and then she smiled even harder, and so did I.. bottom line, I felt like we really did connect there for a second, and I should've jumped on that when I had the chance (but then, this had never happened to me before, so I was kinda taken by surprise, heh). And I have tried, since. But the bottom line is, I can't be sure if that was just something she did because it's her job, or that she really liked me too. Tonight, I'm going to have dinner there, and I hope to have some conversation with her. Maybe, if things go well, ask her if she likes to go to a concert/theatre-thing with me, coming thursday.

 

So, the only advice I can give you (and which I hope I'll do too, tonight) is just try and strike up a conversation, and see where that goes. But most importantly, don't expect anything out of it. I've done that in the past, secretly expecting something to happen, and it always went bad and depressed me.

 

So, good luck! Whatever you do, I'd very much like to hear how it turns out.

[Unmotivated]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I'll have to check which finger the ring is on next time. I feel sort of silly going to Wal Mart with the pretense of buying a snack just so I can go through her line at the checkout.

 

It's good to hear that I'm not the only person in this boat. Frustrating isn't it? I lived in the dorms at my college my first two years here and then my friends and I moved into a house. Since the move I have felt extremely disconnected socially. The only time I really get a chance to meet people is in my classes or at campus events (which I don't really go to that often). Oh well. I guess if I really want a relationship I'm going to have to go out of my way to look for it.

 

Anyway, I'll keep you guys posted.

[annie24]

Pause. The first thing that comes to mind about this is a conversation I overheard in class last semester. A guy was telling someone about how he went to dinner and noticed that the waitress seemed kind of interested in him, and so he asked her out. She basically said no, she'd just got over a relationship and didn't want to start anything. Well, another waitress heard the conversation and told the manager and the guy got banned from the resturant.

 

I don't think that you're getting the whole story from this guy. If he got banned from the restaurant, I bet that he was doing some creepy stuff to the waitresses, perhaps asking out a lot of them. The manager probably got sick of this guy coming around, so he got him banned.

 

I think just asking out one person one time in a nice way isn't enough to get you banned. I think that this guy must have been belligerent in some way.

 

I think that managers probably like hiring attractive waitresses and cashier girls because they think that may increase their business from men always finding excuses to go to the business to buy stuff That's why I say, this guy must have been doing something else bad...

 

So, don't let that discourage you from talking to the Wal Mart girl. Obviously, you're looking for a nice diamond ring on her left hand. But, I wear rings on my left hand, ring finger sometimes because they are family heirlooms, and it's the only finger it fits on. And, tons of people in relationships don't wear a ring at all.

 

She may be being flirty with you, or she may just be doing her job. Remember, part of her job is to be nice to the customer.

 

Why don't you just ask her for her phone number, and the worst thing that can happen is she says no. i highly doubt you'll get banned.

 

GOOD LUCK!!!

[DropToZero]

I'm not sure what type of girls either of you two in this post like, but you need to stop with the girls that have jobs as greeters,or hosts, or waitresses. Okay, waitresses aren't a bad place to start as long as you know what you're doing when trying to ask her out. What I'm trying to say is that these girls that have those jobs, are for a good reason. They were hired b/c they seemed friendly, open, and generally were good with people. They smile at EVERYONE that comes in b/c they're paid to do it. It's not a bad place to work on your social skills with girls, but don't assume b/c she is smiling at you that she is interested. She is being paid to talk, flirt, and/or smile at everyone. If she's a waitress, and she's flirting with you, she may not be doing it for you, she may be just doing it b/c you'll tip her more. Just be careful...

[lonelyd00d]

LtAwesome, I am aware of that. I think Energismus is too. That's part of the problem, we simply don't know if they're just doing their job or are genuinely 'interested'. And I think that in both cases, the girls in question are just students trying to make an extra buck, not professional/hot greeters

 

Well, as it turns out, I didn't sat down for dinner there. But went to take some out. But she wasn't there.. Which is too bad, 'cos I really felt like striking up a conversation no matter what.. Oh well.. I hope she still works there tho.. Otherwise, I know somebody who 'knows' her. At least my mates know that I kinda like her, so some of 'em are being quite supportive (which is really nice, for a change).

 

Just on a side note: I'm sure movies and TV are to blame for this problem too. Where the protagonist conquers the heart of this really cute girl and they have a wonderful romance. I don't think that happens very often for real. (If ever)..

[Unmotivated]

Yes, I do understand that these people are being paid to be nice to the customers, but I feel like there is more of a connection once in a while. Four years ago I worked as a cashier in a grocery store in my home town, and I know I would try to do some subtle flirting with customers once in a while. I'm sure the store/business would not approve of it, but I don't really care about what they think. It's between me and someone else. The store is just the place.

 

However, I do think that it's easy to read to far into a simple smile or laugh, or even a quick conversation, with a worker somewhere. My problem, really is that my "social senses" (if you want to call them that) are not very well refined and I have a hard time telling professionalism from real interest.

 

Just on a side note: I'm sure movies and TV are to blame for this problem too. Where the protagonist conquers the heart of this really cute girl and they have a wonderful romance. I don't think that happens very often for real. (If ever)..

 

I agree. Movies teach us that no matter what, if you try hard enough you can get anyone to love you, but this doesn't seem further from the truth. People are interested in different qualities in people... I could be the complete opposite of what someone is looking for and that person could be exactly what I am looking for, and no amount of hollywood charisma is going to convince her that she likes me.

[here2understand2]

interesting, yeah people working at stores are supposed to be friendly and always 'smilin' but in ur situation i think dude u've got a chance, but u gotta act fast otherwise she'd figure out tht u probably dont hav the guts to come and ask her out/u're involved with someone..so i'd say lay it on the line, walk up to her and say a friendly 'Hi!'..no pickup lines, no BS, no blabberin..dress well, smell good, look good, no hands in the pocket and then take it from there!..a simple thing like 'i was just wondering if u'd like to have coffee sometime' should work..nd she'd endup sayin "Sure!"..nd then is the perfect time for u 2 ask her fone number!..lemme kno how it goes!

[Unmotivated]

Eh, went last night and kind of messed up. I grabbed a couple of random things just so I could go through her line. Problem is that there were two cashiers last night. At Wal Mart the cashiers are supposed to stand at the entrance to their line if they don't have any customers. The other cashier was closer. I should have walked on by, grabbed something else, and came back the other way, but I didn't think quickly enough. I figured that it would be pretty awkward if I skipped the first cashier and went through her line, so I ended up checking out my stuff with other one. Oh well, I think I'm going to need an instance when none of her co-workers are around to seriously talk to her.

 

Tried again tonight, but the she wasn't working.

 

I guess I'll see what happens tomorrow. I bet some of the workers there are wondering why the heck I keep coming in at 1 in the morning alone to buy some random crap. lol

 

Anyway, I'll keep you guys updated, and any suggestions are certainly welcome. I really just want to get it off my chest, whether or not anything good comes from it. I'm definitely focusing way to much on this situation, if you know what I mean.

[lonelyd00d]

Heh.. careful.. co-workers can be very observative indeed. And they will end up talking about you. (Personal experience). It's a chance, it could work in your advantage: 'I bet that guy has a crush on you' or something.. or in your disadvantage: 'Why is that creep always walking in at 1?'.

 

Not trying to mess with your mind now. Heh. Just be careful not to come off as a stalker. I know, it's a tough position. But you gotta take the first chance you get. No excuses!

[lonelyd00d]

Well, I resolved last week that I would definitely take the first opportunity to talk with her. As it turned out, she wasn't around today either. So I struck up a conversation with her boss, and she told me that she already had a boyfriend.. oh well.

[annie24]

oh well... sorry! well, now you know....