My father would often greet potential customers with a cheery “How about that game?”, even though all he’d have read was the headline on the sports page. But asking that could launch an animated description while my dad smiled and nodded.

He said it made the sports people think he was “normal” and didn’t upset anyone who didn’t care.

I never did that and if my customers tried to bring it up, I told them I did not follow sports. But they knew they were renting a geek, so that was okay.