I have a pretty reliable "gut feeling" on people. I think a lot of it comes from working retail in the Combat Zone in Boston where you have 15 seconds to decide whether someone is (1) browsing, (2) buying, or (3) casing the joint.

(Funny story: When I worked retail, you'd get $25 for catching a stolen credit card that appeared in the bulletin, but you'd get $100 if you initiated the discovery (ie: if you reported it stolen before the cardholder had). In two years, I caught 127 stolen cards. When I got promoted to a higher volume store in a safer neighborhood, I lost about $6K in stolen credit card rewards per year).

While it sounds horribly judgmental, after listening to someone construct one or two paragraphs, I've usually got them pegged.


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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."