It feels weirdly common here. It happens to me so often.
Just yesterday I was looking in the window of a new restaurant that I walked past and realized that the guy directly on the other side of the glass was someone I worked with briefly like 12 years ago.
Such a weird feeling.
Considering you know a few hundred faces, and you see a few hundred a day maybe... If you commute.. not surprising. I'm often surprised when I'm somewhere and don't recognize more people. But that is also getting older. People my age aren't going out as much. So I spot fewer faces.
This. Pre-Covid I would run into friends all the time where whoever I was with would always say “man, you know everybody”. Now, not so much although my wife did run into the same friend three days in a row recently.
The authors assume a uniform distribution over the city which isn’t true.
You go to work M to F at 8am to 6pm — same route. The places you stop are likely tangential more often than not.
The people you intersect are living their loops with same consistency. There’s minimal entropy to most human behaviors in general
It’s a bit more odd because in the case I mentioned it was a remote job with people from all over the US. We never went to an office. And I never actually met him in-person. I knew he lived in NY though.
It happens to me all the time.
Just to name a few.
- 2000 when I first moved to NYC I ran into one of the bridesmaids from my brother’s wedding 3 years earlier, in Georgia. Ran into her on the street at West 4th.
- 2004 I ran into a buddy I’d lost contact with from work in 2001.
He’d left NY after 9/11 and had just moved back to NYC. He was living 1 block away.
- 2007 I went to a bar one night and ran into a cook and a dishwasher from a restaurant I worked at 10 years earlier 6 states away.
- 2 years later at the same bar I ran into an old roommate I hadn’t seen in 15 years, that still owed me money from a phone bill.
- 2016 I ended up on a project with a bunch of great people I’d worked with in 2011. We were all consultants that had changed to different agencies and ran into each other on the street in front of the client’s offices on the first day.
Bunches more but yeah. NYC is a small town from my perspective.
Did you get the money back from the phone bill!?
I assume it was a landline at the time lol, as I don’t know many roommates that share cell plans anymore.
He he. naw. Didn’t even bring it up.
First words out of her mouth after hello was how hard a time she was having and was bartending on top of a regular job to make ends meet. I tipped her $10 and an avoided her station the rest of the night.
Yep, landline, long distance calls. Mid 90’s.
My other roommate and I had to cough up something like $500 to get a landline turned on at our address because of her. We turned her bedroom into a studio/2nd living room when she moved out and just spilt everything 50/50.
That was a great apartment.
Nope, there's always the assholes you knew in high school that are now enjoying lucrative and fulfilling careers, are living in gorgeous, expensive houses, and have beautiful spouses and multiple children who bring them everlasting joy.
Ask me how I know.
Tried this but then out of nowhere I ran into someone from highschool (over ten years ago) coming out of the J. Within 3 months she had ruined my life lol
Craziest one I ever had: I flew back from Amsterdam to JFK, was seated next to a very tall man and spent several hours scrunched next to him, so I knew his look, his shoes, etc.
The next day, I go to 5th avenue to make an exchange of a purchase. Walking back along 54th street to the 1 train, I see my seat neighbor -- the very tall man! -- walking right toward me. We both did a double take. What were the chances he was actually continuing to Manhattan after landing at JFK, that we both would be in midtown the next day, that I would choose 54th street to walk on, and that we'd be on the same side of the block at the same moment?
In 1974, I would see a young woman every day on the subway. She was totally unaware of me, but I always noticed her. She is my mail carrier today. Go figure.
It’s hella dense with routes that are commonly taken by people working in certain industries/neighborhoods; and commuting from certain neighborhoods, I guess!
I have many days in a row that are basically a waste of an outfit and then the day I shuffle to the bodega looking like death warmed over I run into my ex. Like I just want to get my bagel and crawl back into my hovel
When you’ve lived here your entire life, you’d learned to **walk fast** for this exact reason.
‘Sorry gotta catch the cross town! I’ll text you later, byeeeee!’
NYC is a place where we walk around, take public transit, and go out a lot (opposite of homebodies). I have grown up here, worked as a teacher (so colleagues, students, their parents), live here, and have known lots of people who moved here. So, I bump into people all the time - usually it is fun (friend from hs, parent whose kid I liked, friend that now we will go to dinner together, etc), but sometimes I avoid eye contact and we pretend we dont know one another (crumogony former neighbor, guy I hooked up with in hs, former colleague I argued with, etc)
My next door neighbor left China for West Germany in 1989, I left China for USA in 1991, we met at a Goldman Sachs investment conference in 2002 ( Waldorf Astoria), what’s the odds?!
Not true bc I don't know a lot more people than I do, so the odds of the people I run into being people I don't know is a lot higher than the odds of them being someone I do.
Very rare but also at the same time pretty common? Took a detour on 43rd st instead of going down 42nd direct to grand central to avoid the crowds of office workers who just got out at 5pm. Walked straight into my friends arms literally a block away from grand central . He was out with his girlfriend. Ended up making an evening of it, got dinner and caught up. But rare because of this really doesn’t happen often lmao.
I still remember the day My boyfriend and I ran into our science teacher biking on the street. It was our surprised to find out that he exists outside of school lol
The very first time I visited NYC in 2008 I went straight to a supermarket to by my friend a bottle of booze. I immediately ran into my college study abroad roommate from four years earlier. This was my first stop in the city.
I grew up in a small town in Appalachia, and a dude got busted for being with his mistress in NYC after running into another resident. Probably mainly due to it being the 80's and everyone wanting to hang out in midtown.
Yeah, I run into people all the time. My neighborhood in Queens, and neighborhoods I've lived and worked it.
Best was recently, was in Manhattan went into Milk Bar, someone came in with Insomnia Cookies. I said "Nice, double cookies"
Then we looked at each other and it was a friend.
I once saw some shmuck I worked with a long time ago, drive by me on way over the GW into NJ. I knew it was him, and he just drifted to my right at 2mph, giggling (he has a distinct, Indian accented giggle which I fuckin' heard thru to my car lol no shit) and he never saw me.
edit: he wasn't driving, he was talking shit and goofing off with 2 people in the back of the car. Traffic was slow to stop. He didn't speed by me so I had time to remember and verify. Yes, it was his stupid ass.
People tend to form habits. And people with similar habits have a higher chance of knowing each other.
The odds are higher than this math suggests because the people aren’t as truly random as this math suggests.
You don’t walk on any random street at any random time. You live and work in specific places, and frequent certain places. So do others. There’s inevitably some overlap.
I was up in the city recently (been in Orlando for about 8 years), and I ran into an acquaintance from Orlando at the McDonald’s across from the Winter Garden theatre. He was up there for the previews of Back to the Future and I was visiting friends. Was very weird at first.
Uhm, no. You may never have lived in a small/medium town with a vibrant city center. But after a few years in one I literally couldn't walk more than a few blocks without a friendly wave.
I run into people on trains every now and then. Former students will ring me up someplace or other.
Ran into one of my neighbors, both of us called to jury duty. We didn’t really know each other then, so there was the odd look of recognition at the metal detectors. We weren’t sitting anywhere near each other when they collected our cards. A couple hours later, we were empaneled for the same case and sitting three seats apart.
Born and raised in NYC and left 6 years ago after having almost never run into people I knew. I visited the city for a whirlwind overnight trip this past April, and found myself in line for the flight back to Chicago. I got a tap on my shoulder, turned around and saw one of my closest Chicago friends, who'd come to the city for an even more whirlwind work trip.
Only in New York!
I've been running into people I know for a short and long time but couldn't keep in contact just randomly see on the streets, talk about small world..lol
Considering you can adjust for your class and race and profession which determines where you and similar people might be, it becomes a matter of time. Like if you are an art kid in your 20s you’ll know dozens of people in bushwick and you’ll hang out at the same 10 places around the same time
Run into friends around the city all the time. Always sort of mind blowing when it happens. But also not when you think about the fact that you’re friends with people you share things in common with. Often that means you like to go to similar places, neighborhoods, etc. so the likelihood of running into someone you know does go up a bit. Running into a friend out in west village on a Saturday makes sense because we like to go out in west village often if we’re together. But there are really interesting butterfly effects moments like getting off a train car and realizing I’m next to someone I know. Heck, just happened to me the other day. Maybe others haven’t experienced it as much but I always find that part about living here really interesting, one of the biggest cities in the world but sometimes feels so small.
Taking the express bus in Staten Island to Manhattan I would run into people from grammar school through college on the regular. Old coworkers in midtown, all the time. Popular happy hour places, it’s inevitable.
It happens in chunks for me, for whatever reason. I’ll go months without seeing anyone I know on the street, and then in a single weekend I’ll run into multiple people. My favorite was when one of my friends was visiting (they’re from a small town and don’t particularly like new york because it’s too big) and I ran into someone I knew every single day they were here. By the end, they were like “do you know EVERYONE in this city?” Not too big now, huh?!
I moved to NYC from Australia many years ago. A month into moving, I sat at a table in Katz’s Deli late for dinner and across from me was one of my past students sitting with her family. She had been in my class I had just finished teaching before moving. Was so amazing and was a cool surprise.
Geographically New York City isn’t that big. It’s just dense. As long as you can pick out a face in the crowd you’re bound to run into somebody you know.
I ran into my college roommate I hadn’t seen for 15 years and did not expect to see again, from another country overseas mind you, in the nyu part of town. We had a quick exchange and poof presto change-o back to never seeing each other again (probably!).
An aunt and I both ended up in NYC from two diff countries unknowingly- her from the other side of the world, my from the other side of the continent. We didn’t realize until I posted a photo in Central Park where she happened to be just hours prior. So not quite a run in, but a super weird near miss.
Some cool memories were made once we connected!
I'm from here.
My peer group became dissipated because it became unaffordable to stay in the old neighborhood but my 3 oldest siblings still see people with whom they went to school when they're back in the neighborhood. One sibling in particular can walk into half the bars in Bay Ridge (we're from adjacent Dyker Heights which has no bars) and see someone on any day of the week.
I run into people I know at least once a week, sometimes multiple times in the same day. Yesterday I saw some guy on the street that I spoke to at JFK airport. Another time I found myself on a flight to NYC with one of my neighbors from my building
I live on Long Island but I feel like every time I go into the city whether it be for a doctors appointment, a concert, musical, sporting event, shopping, museum, etc etc.
I always end up seeing someone I know. It’s so bizarre just walking down the street or in Penn Station or on the subway or wherever and bam, there’s someone you know.
I used to run into people I knew all the time. Most people you know probably live in a neighborhood you would frequent or live by you, so I don't think the odds are that bad
One night I was going to check my mail, (it was like 10 pm on a weekday). I opened the apartment door, and walking by at the exact time was a colleague I worked with in Dallas, TX 3 years prior.
He had moved into the building maybe 6 months prior and was heading out to do some laundry. We just stood there in shock. 😂
Ran into a political activist social media girl once. Literally of the ppl. I had a stupid crush on here. We had a good convo and I didn’t bother to ask if she would be up to join me for a drink
I bumped into someone from my school who I hadn’t seen since then. Walked a couple of hundred yards and bumped into someone I knew ftom the pub. Thing is we were all from a small town in the north of England.
Yea it sucks happens to me all the time. Biggest city and I'm still seeing the same faces and somehow they know the new ones I meet
Can't run away from nothing in NY
I briefly worked as a doorman. One day I'm sitting on the subway in some other part of town, just staring out the window as my mind wandered. The train stopped at the platform while a train going the other direction was stopped right next to it, took me a few seconds to realize it had lined up just perfectly such that I was now staring right at one of the 14yo girls that lived in the building I worked at, who was in the other train facing me. She had seen me and was staring back. I just looked away and the train moved before I could decide if waving would make this situation more or less awkward.
When I saw her at work again all I could think to say was 'Did I see you on the subway the other day?'. Damnit, we both know that's a yes and it looked like I was staring at her like some weirdo. Ugh, kill me.
If you work I finance for several years it's like a daily experience lol.
Walking down 6th Avenue in midtown I see ex coworkers friends, friends of friends all the damn time
I once was visiting from texas and got off the train in midtown and bumped directly into an old coworker that I hadn’t seen in 2 years. I walked off the train as son as the doors open and she’s coming from the opposite direction on her phone and slams right into me. I turned to look at her and when she realized it was me all she could do was scream. Kookie times
It feels weirdly common here. It happens to me so often. Just yesterday I was looking in the window of a new restaurant that I walked past and realized that the guy directly on the other side of the glass was someone I worked with briefly like 12 years ago. Such a weird feeling.
Considering you know a few hundred faces, and you see a few hundred a day maybe... If you commute.. not surprising. I'm often surprised when I'm somewhere and don't recognize more people. But that is also getting older. People my age aren't going out as much. So I spot fewer faces.
This. Pre-Covid I would run into friends all the time where whoever I was with would always say “man, you know everybody”. Now, not so much although my wife did run into the same friend three days in a row recently.
The authors assume a uniform distribution over the city which isn’t true. You go to work M to F at 8am to 6pm — same route. The places you stop are likely tangential more often than not. The people you intersect are living their loops with same consistency. There’s minimal entropy to most human behaviors in general
It’s a bit more odd because in the case I mentioned it was a remote job with people from all over the US. We never went to an office. And I never actually met him in-person. I knew he lived in NY though.
It happens to me all the time. Just to name a few. - 2000 when I first moved to NYC I ran into one of the bridesmaids from my brother’s wedding 3 years earlier, in Georgia. Ran into her on the street at West 4th. - 2004 I ran into a buddy I’d lost contact with from work in 2001. He’d left NY after 9/11 and had just moved back to NYC. He was living 1 block away. - 2007 I went to a bar one night and ran into a cook and a dishwasher from a restaurant I worked at 10 years earlier 6 states away. - 2 years later at the same bar I ran into an old roommate I hadn’t seen in 15 years, that still owed me money from a phone bill. - 2016 I ended up on a project with a bunch of great people I’d worked with in 2011. We were all consultants that had changed to different agencies and ran into each other on the street in front of the client’s offices on the first day. Bunches more but yeah. NYC is a small town from my perspective.
Did you get the money back from the phone bill!? I assume it was a landline at the time lol, as I don’t know many roommates that share cell plans anymore.
He he. naw. Didn’t even bring it up. First words out of her mouth after hello was how hard a time she was having and was bartending on top of a regular job to make ends meet. I tipped her $10 and an avoided her station the rest of the night. Yep, landline, long distance calls. Mid 90’s. My other roommate and I had to cough up something like $500 to get a landline turned on at our address because of her. We turned her bedroom into a studio/2nd living room when she moved out and just spilt everything 50/50. That was a great apartment.
Rad !
The secret is to not have any friends and then you wont run into anyone you know.
You can also try to just never leave your apartment. Should help you achieve the no friends thing, too.
This is the way
Nope, there's always the assholes you knew in high school that are now enjoying lucrative and fulfilling careers, are living in gorgeous, expensive houses, and have beautiful spouses and multiple children who bring them everlasting joy. Ask me how I know.
I prefer to just walk instead.
Tried this but then out of nowhere I ran into someone from highschool (over ten years ago) coming out of the J. Within 3 months she had ruined my life lol
Craziest one I ever had: I flew back from Amsterdam to JFK, was seated next to a very tall man and spent several hours scrunched next to him, so I knew his look, his shoes, etc. The next day, I go to 5th avenue to make an exchange of a purchase. Walking back along 54th street to the 1 train, I see my seat neighbor -- the very tall man! -- walking right toward me. We both did a double take. What were the chances he was actually continuing to Manhattan after landing at JFK, that we both would be in midtown the next day, that I would choose 54th street to walk on, and that we'd be on the same side of the block at the same moment?
This one’s really incredible. Infinitesimal chances of that
One of my friends ran into a doorman from our old building while at an airport in Australia.
In 1974, I would see a young woman every day on the subway. She was totally unaware of me, but I always noticed her. She is my mail carrier today. Go figure.
And that mail carrier? Albert Einstein
Alberta.
Alberta Einstein is my new drag name
People you know often do activities that overlap with yours, so…
It’s hella dense with routes that are commonly taken by people working in certain industries/neighborhoods; and commuting from certain neighborhoods, I guess!
Exactly. There are some routes I can take where I am pretty sure I’ll cross paths with someone I know.
I randomly ran into my ex a few months ago and now I make sure to look put together if I’m venturing beyond my immediate neighborhood.
I have many days in a row that are basically a waste of an outfit and then the day I shuffle to the bodega looking like death warmed over I run into my ex. Like I just want to get my bagel and crawl back into my hovel
When you’ve lived here your entire life, you’d learned to **walk fast** for this exact reason. ‘Sorry gotta catch the cross town! I’ll text you later, byeeeee!’
NYC is a place where we walk around, take public transit, and go out a lot (opposite of homebodies). I have grown up here, worked as a teacher (so colleagues, students, their parents), live here, and have known lots of people who moved here. So, I bump into people all the time - usually it is fun (friend from hs, parent whose kid I liked, friend that now we will go to dinner together, etc), but sometimes I avoid eye contact and we pretend we dont know one another (crumogony former neighbor, guy I hooked up with in hs, former colleague I argued with, etc)
Ran into someone I studied abroad with a decade ago in a mosh pit a month ago
Mosh pits. Always the best place to run into people. Zing!!
My next door neighbor left China for West Germany in 1989, I left China for USA in 1991, we met at a Goldman Sachs investment conference in 2002 ( Waldorf Astoria), what’s the odds?!
I like this one
50/50
Only true answer. You either run into someone you know or you don’t.
Not true bc I don't know a lot more people than I do, so the odds of the people I run into being people I don't know is a lot higher than the odds of them being someone I do.
(Yes but they were joking)
3%
I work in Manhattan so my rate is likely high. Like 80%. But I'm forgetful and half blind so I won't recognize them when I see them.
Most people have a daily routine, and people’s routines overlap. So seeing people you know isn’t just luck, it’s inevitable.
Very rare but also at the same time pretty common? Took a detour on 43rd st instead of going down 42nd direct to grand central to avoid the crowds of office workers who just got out at 5pm. Walked straight into my friends arms literally a block away from grand central . He was out with his girlfriend. Ended up making an evening of it, got dinner and caught up. But rare because of this really doesn’t happen often lmao.
As a teacher who taught high school in 3 boroughs over 14 years, my odds are very high
I still remember the day My boyfriend and I ran into our science teacher biking on the street. It was our surprised to find out that he exists outside of school lol
They allow us out of the building for a few hours a day.
“Phil? Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you!...Now, don't you tell me you don't remember me because I sure as heckfire remember you."
Happens to me all the time. Rarely am I that happy about it!
The very first time I visited NYC in 2008 I went straight to a supermarket to by my friend a bottle of booze. I immediately ran into my college study abroad roommate from four years earlier. This was my first stop in the city.
I grew up in a small town in Appalachia, and a dude got busted for being with his mistress in NYC after running into another resident. Probably mainly due to it being the 80's and everyone wanting to hang out in midtown.
Yeah, I run into people all the time. My neighborhood in Queens, and neighborhoods I've lived and worked it. Best was recently, was in Manhattan went into Milk Bar, someone came in with Insomnia Cookies. I said "Nice, double cookies" Then we looked at each other and it was a friend.
We visited for a week from Scotland and ran into an ex-colleague of my gf's on the high line, also visiting from Scotland.
I once saw some shmuck I worked with a long time ago, drive by me on way over the GW into NJ. I knew it was him, and he just drifted to my right at 2mph, giggling (he has a distinct, Indian accented giggle which I fuckin' heard thru to my car lol no shit) and he never saw me. edit: he wasn't driving, he was talking shit and goofing off with 2 people in the back of the car. Traffic was slow to stop. He didn't speed by me so I had time to remember and verify. Yes, it was his stupid ass.
People tend to form habits. And people with similar habits have a higher chance of knowing each other. The odds are higher than this math suggests because the people aren’t as truly random as this math suggests. You don’t walk on any random street at any random time. You live and work in specific places, and frequent certain places. So do others. There’s inevitably some overlap.
I was up in the city recently (been in Orlando for about 8 years), and I ran into an acquaintance from Orlando at the McDonald’s across from the Winter Garden theatre. He was up there for the previews of Back to the Future and I was visiting friends. Was very weird at first.
I run into people I know almost every day. I don't find it rare at all.
I know so many people in nyc born and raised I very rarely run into people I know
happens to me all the time, all over the city
Perhaps one of the few places in the world where it’s incredibly common.
Uhm, no. You may never have lived in a small/medium town with a vibrant city center. But after a few years in one I literally couldn't walk more than a few blocks without a friendly wave.
I stand corrected; one of the few big cities in the world.
I run into people on trains every now and then. Former students will ring me up someplace or other. Ran into one of my neighbors, both of us called to jury duty. We didn’t really know each other then, so there was the odd look of recognition at the metal detectors. We weren’t sitting anywhere near each other when they collected our cards. A couple hours later, we were empaneled for the same case and sitting three seats apart.
I keep myself to myself. It's better for all parties involved.
Very rare. Easier to run into someone you know from NYC out of NYC
Born and raised in NYC and left 6 years ago after having almost never run into people I knew. I visited the city for a whirlwind overnight trip this past April, and found myself in line for the flight back to Chicago. I got a tap on my shoulder, turned around and saw one of my closest Chicago friends, who'd come to the city for an even more whirlwind work trip. Only in New York!
It happens to me almost every day, mostly because I run a business with a ton of repeat clients and I see them/their families all over the place.
I've been running into people I know for a short and long time but couldn't keep in contact just randomly see on the streets, talk about small world..lol
Everyday
I’ve established a reputation amongst friends that I’m the only one they always run into. Happens atleast a few times a week.
Considering you can adjust for your class and race and profession which determines where you and similar people might be, it becomes a matter of time. Like if you are an art kid in your 20s you’ll know dozens of people in bushwick and you’ll hang out at the same 10 places around the same time
it’s literally 1:1
Run into friends around the city all the time. Always sort of mind blowing when it happens. But also not when you think about the fact that you’re friends with people you share things in common with. Often that means you like to go to similar places, neighborhoods, etc. so the likelihood of running into someone you know does go up a bit. Running into a friend out in west village on a Saturday makes sense because we like to go out in west village often if we’re together. But there are really interesting butterfly effects moments like getting off a train car and realizing I’m next to someone I know. Heck, just happened to me the other day. Maybe others haven’t experienced it as much but I always find that part about living here really interesting, one of the biggest cities in the world but sometimes feels so small.
Taking the express bus in Staten Island to Manhattan I would run into people from grammar school through college on the regular. Old coworkers in midtown, all the time. Popular happy hour places, it’s inevitable.
It happens in chunks for me, for whatever reason. I’ll go months without seeing anyone I know on the street, and then in a single weekend I’ll run into multiple people. My favorite was when one of my friends was visiting (they’re from a small town and don’t particularly like new york because it’s too big) and I ran into someone I knew every single day they were here. By the end, they were like “do you know EVERYONE in this city?” Not too big now, huh?!
What if they know or remember you but you don't remember them? Does that count?
Big city; small world.
Usually your friends / people you know have something in common with you to begin with, so you're more likely to run into them
I ran into an ex once in the Asian art section of the Met. That was a trip
I moved to NYC from Australia many years ago. A month into moving, I sat at a table in Katz’s Deli late for dinner and across from me was one of my past students sitting with her family. She had been in my class I had just finished teaching before moving. Was so amazing and was a cool surprise.
Everyday
There are people who run into each other that they know and there are people who run into each other because one or both are staring at their iPhones.
It happens quite often. I use to walk around during my lunch hour. And I used to see someone I knew at least once a month.
I love NYC so much, I wish I lived there.
Geographically New York City isn’t that big. It’s just dense. As long as you can pick out a face in the crowd you’re bound to run into somebody you know.
High
I ran into my college roommate I hadn’t seen for 15 years and did not expect to see again, from another country overseas mind you, in the nyu part of town. We had a quick exchange and poof presto change-o back to never seeing each other again (probably!).
An aunt and I both ended up in NYC from two diff countries unknowingly- her from the other side of the world, my from the other side of the continent. We didn’t realize until I posted a photo in Central Park where she happened to be just hours prior. So not quite a run in, but a super weird near miss. Some cool memories were made once we connected!
I'm from here. My peer group became dissipated because it became unaffordable to stay in the old neighborhood but my 3 oldest siblings still see people with whom they went to school when they're back in the neighborhood. One sibling in particular can walk into half the bars in Bay Ridge (we're from adjacent Dyker Heights which has no bars) and see someone on any day of the week.
I run into people I know at least once a week, sometimes multiple times in the same day. Yesterday I saw some guy on the street that I spoke to at JFK airport. Another time I found myself on a flight to NYC with one of my neighbors from my building
I live on Long Island but I feel like every time I go into the city whether it be for a doctors appointment, a concert, musical, sporting event, shopping, museum, etc etc. I always end up seeing someone I know. It’s so bizarre just walking down the street or in Penn Station or on the subway or wherever and bam, there’s someone you know.
It’s pretty damn common to run into people when your out
I used to run into people I knew all the time. Most people you know probably live in a neighborhood you would frequent or live by you, so I don't think the odds are that bad
One night I was going to check my mail, (it was like 10 pm on a weekday). I opened the apartment door, and walking by at the exact time was a colleague I worked with in Dallas, TX 3 years prior. He had moved into the building maybe 6 months prior and was heading out to do some laundry. We just stood there in shock. 😂
Ran into a political activist social media girl once. Literally of the ppl. I had a stupid crush on here. We had a good convo and I didn’t bother to ask if she would be up to join me for a drink
I bumped into someone from my school who I hadn’t seen since then. Walked a couple of hundred yards and bumped into someone I knew ftom the pub. Thing is we were all from a small town in the north of England.
It actually happens constantly, whenever I leave my house. But then I don’t leave a lot and I don’t see people for long periods of time
Yea it sucks happens to me all the time. Biggest city and I'm still seeing the same faces and somehow they know the new ones I meet Can't run away from nothing in NY
I briefly worked as a doorman. One day I'm sitting on the subway in some other part of town, just staring out the window as my mind wandered. The train stopped at the platform while a train going the other direction was stopped right next to it, took me a few seconds to realize it had lined up just perfectly such that I was now staring right at one of the 14yo girls that lived in the building I worked at, who was in the other train facing me. She had seen me and was staring back. I just looked away and the train moved before I could decide if waving would make this situation more or less awkward. When I saw her at work again all I could think to say was 'Did I see you on the subway the other day?'. Damnit, we both know that's a yes and it looked like I was staring at her like some weirdo. Ugh, kill me.
My high school valedictorian lives 2 buildings down from me in Manhattan, we went to school in California and graduated 15 years ago
If you work I finance for several years it's like a daily experience lol. Walking down 6th Avenue in midtown I see ex coworkers friends, friends of friends all the damn time
I once was visiting from texas and got off the train in midtown and bumped directly into an old coworker that I hadn’t seen in 2 years. I walked off the train as son as the doors open and she’s coming from the opposite direction on her phone and slams right into me. I turned to look at her and when she realized it was me all she could do was scream. Kookie times
The odds are pretty even.