Bar #53 or #54 awfulness (1 of 2): Physicists.

So my one friend with the cat invited me to this "science cafe" bar event where an educated person gives a very short lecture and then takes Q&A from the audience for a while, and when another friend who runs a similar type lecture-event couldn't come, she asked me to talk it up.

So, when I got there, there was some awfulness with the bar people (which continued throughout the night), but then I hunted down the head of the event, and it was this (white) (mid-40s) physicist out of Fermi Lab with glasses and a collared shirt and (non-dark) jeans.

I explained my friends event and asked if I could make a quick announcement before the event started or after it ended, and the guy was like, "No, I can't endorse anything that I haven't been to" (which he really meant!).

He then said that during Q&A I could raise my hand and then pretend-ask a question to lead into an announcement (which he really meant! - because I'm sure my violating social conventions like that would make friends and bring people to my friend's event).

Physicists are out-to-lunch socially...

My one lawyer friend from Missouri, who also was at the event, said I should have identified myself as a ph.d. student, but I said that if his knowing I had a degree made me treat him better, I didn't want to talk to him.

I had also mentioned that the co-host of the one event that my friend had asked me to promote was also by a guy out of Fermi Lab, and when the physicist asked who it was and I couldn't identify him, he seemed not to take me seriously.

Much later, my one lawyer friend from Missouri noted out of the blue when that guy stood up to close the event how pompous he seemed, and then when he thanked everyone and (obliviously) noted how there had been a lot of nice questions "from the fifth-grade level through more advanced questions", she was like, "See, look how pompous he is, 'fifth-grade level'."

And the guy didn't even realize it.

And when I was leaving, he was like, "Hey, you didn't ask your question!", but I told him I'd just go around table-to-table then to personally talk, which I spur-of-the-moment decided to do, and I talked with about 15-16 people, of whom like 10 seemed interested.