Last Monday, 23-year-old Bailey Haddington responded to a story you were telling her about your previous night’s date by saying “that’s crazy”. The overwhelmingly generic statement all but confirmed the fact that she was definitely not listening to anything you were saying.
Despite her bare-minimum attempt at sounding interested, Bailey made it clear that she was fully unengaged by adding some even more nonspecific conversational reactions.
“Wow, that’s insane,” she added, despite the fact that nothing in your story was actually that insane.
Bailey, a notorious half-listener, evidently did not retain a single detail from your short anecdote, which she still somehow managed to call “wild” and “totally unbelievable”. Two days after her initial thinly-veiled disregard, she was genuinely surprised by you telling her about plans that you already told her you had.
“I figured we could do dinner tonight, I had no idea you were going on a second date with this dude,” said Bailey. “Actually, I had no idea you went on a first date with him. When was this?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she added, unaware that you did tell her, she just ignored it and then said it was “so weird”.
According to other friends, you are not the only person who Bailey barely pretends to listen to.
“She’s hits me with those half-assed reactions all the time,” said Callie DeAngelo. “Once I was telling her that my grandma was sick, and she ‘oh my god, that’s so funny’. Like, at least get better at faking that you heard what I said.”
“I told Bailey that I got into law school, and she didn’t even respond or look up from her phone,” added Kerry Tan. “She just scrolled through Twitter, totally spaced out of our conversation, then said ‘I can’t believe that happened’. She’s pretty rude sometimes.”
But Bailey doesn’t seem to be aware that people are even noticing.
“I’m really good at multitasking,” she says. “I can be fully engaged in a conversation while I’m doing something else. Like right now! It’s effortless to me. Sorry, what were you asking?”
When we explained that her friends are more than aware that she’s usually tuned out of their chats, Bailey responded: “Wow, that’s crazy.”
