I wanted to have dinner and drinks the other day in a busy downtown area. Taking the hotel shuttle allowed me to do what I wanted to do while avoiding traffic and parking issues. When the shuttle arrived at the hotel to pick me up, four people and the driver, Larry, were already inside. I got on with little fanfare and away we went. Everyone kept to themselves and all seemed well.

A short distance into our journey downtown, Larry stopped to pick up a lady who told everyone she was going back to the hotel. Unfortunately, that’s not all she told us. She told us about the delicious dinner she had eaten at the Italian restaurant, that her husband-who wasn’t with her-was Italian, that he liked Italian food, that she had three cocktails during dinner, and that she had never been downtown before. She went on and on and on and on, and trust me, I wanted to stop believin’ that I was stuck in the shuttle listening to her for over 20 minutes. And to make matters worse, her voice was loud and unique. I’m not talking about the ‘soothing to the ear’ kind of unique. I’m talking about the ‘nails on a chalkboard’ kind of unique. She clearly didn’t care about the nails or the chalkboard because she just kept on talking. She was an incessant chit-chatterer.

What makes someone who steps onto a quiet shuttle think that the other passengers want to hear their chit-chat; their incessant chit-chat? Why don’t they just get on the shuttle, take a seat, buckle up, and enjoy the ride…quietly? Oh, that’s right, it’s because their extroverts. They like the fanfare and don’t know how to keep to themselves. And the rest of us just have to suffer.