Or you could, give the dude a shot and stop taking the easy way out of a potential human connection by telling yourself you don't want to go out with someone you work with. "different circumstances might lead to a different situation?" Saying that means you see potential in the guy. By refusing to go out with him you're placing your job ahead of your personal life. Plus, it's the PERFECT excuse if you end up not liking him. Then you can tell him that you cant' date someone you work with. You are more important than your job. Just remember that. Few people who place their 9-5 ahead of their personal life end up happy. Also, friends of mine met while working together and are one of the happiest couples I know.
I get rejected alot, because I generally will ask a girl out in a really douchey way, especially infront of my friends, so getting shot down is the general idea, it's good for a laugh. What sucks though is getting shot down for a dance. Like Im a good dancer, I took lessons for 3 years (country 2-stepping and line dancing as well as square dancing), Im not a total fugg, dressed nice, and all I want to do is dance because I like to get drunk and dance to country music.* When some broad says no, and its usually a less then stellar looking one, it's hard to play off. When this happens I usually sit down, and wait for the next song to go back out. *Trust me guys, a girl likes a guy who knows how to dance. If your really good people notice, and girls like that because most of them like to be the center of attention. Other girls see a girl at the center of everyones attention and they get jealous of her, then its easy picking from there. I got laid so many times because I know how to move my feet.
FOCUS: How do you let someone down easy? Do you have any good on-liners that let the person know, "Thanks, but no thanks," and still keep a civil relationship with them? Generally my strategy is to sleep with them for 2+ months, slowly growing more aloof and distant. Eventually there is a culminating point where she realizes that I haven't been totally honest with her, and everything erupts in an emotional outburst. Our relationship thereafter will be polite but strained, I will withdraw introspectively for a short period, believing I somehow learned a life lesson from all this and can avoid making the same mistake again. Rinse and repeat. ALT FOCUS: Have you been rejected? Were they nice about it, or did you pull a Tobias Funke and go and sit in the shower, biting on a washcloth to stifle the sobs? I can't really remember specific times that I've been rejected. Not to say that it doesn't happen—but nothing that really stands out as memorable. For whatever reason, a fairly common way of rejecting someone (in my experience) is to make some sort of passive agreement for plans, and then never really follow up on it. Which can be frustrating because then it becomes hard to tell if the plans just fell off her radar because of something else or if she was never interested in the first place. At that point I'll do some one follow-up, and if it doesn't pan out by that point then I move on. Nothing lost.
This turned out a little longer than I thought, so I spoiled it. It's probably only funny to me because it involves me. Spoiler The coldest rejection I have suffered happened my first week in college. I had been seeing this girl all week, but never found an opportunity to talk to her. The last night of orientation they held a dance and I saw her standing by herself, so I went straight up to her. Gravitas: Hi, I'm Gravitas *sticking out my hand Unicorn: Layla *ignores my hand and turns 180 degrees to thin air and stands there. It takes 5 seconds of befuddled silence before I realize that she wasn't going to turn back around. Not so bad right? The next day my much better looking friend and I were shooting the shit outside my dorm room. I had just finished telling him the story when we see her down the way. She walked by and I asked her how it was going. She completely ignored me, turned to my friend, introduced herself, flirted with him obscenely, writes her phone number on his arm, and says to call her anytime. She never even glanced at me. Talk about salt on a fucking wound. On the upside she turned out to be one of my close fraternity brothers cousins, so over the course of a few years I got her to speak more than 1 word to me at a time. That's called progress. TL;DR Hottest girl I have ever approached completely ignores me and then hits on my good looking friend in front of me the day after. Girls giving you the soft let down is only better if you don't find out the truth. I asked a girl to a fraternity formal once. She said "No, I would like to, but I have dance practice early the next morning." I was trying to bat way out of my league (on the university dance team after all), so I took that as a minor success. Facebook then informed me that she just went to another formal instead. Bummer. Edit: While I'm here I might as well mention that I once got turned down (on my birthday no less) by a girl that was affectionately known as "Rotisserie". My self-esteem took a hit, but my immune system was relieved.
There seems to be quite a few posts asking as to why I said yes. The backstory, if you're interested: Let's pick a random name: Mike. I work - directly and indirectly - with many, many Mikes. The phone rang yesterday at my desk and the guy said, "Hi Darcy, it's Mike." I had been phoning back and forth with a framer named Mike for several days, so I said, "Hey, Mike! What's up?" As we chatted and the conversation took a turn to, "Would you like to go out next week for coffee?" It suddenly clicked that I was not speaking with framer Mike, but one of our employees named Mike. At that moment my brain froze and I clicked onto autopilot, which meant that I graciously accepted his invitation as my brain screamed "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" So, now we'll just go out to coffee, have a nice conversation and I'll say "thanks but no thanks, this isn't going to work."
And don't forget that the female brain is wired to automatically accept free stuff. Why do you think the cosmetic counter's Free Gift is such a huge hit? It's genetics. They can't help themselves. Just like we can't stop lusting after boobies.
It will start with coffee... then no doubt escalate to dinner. All the while you'll have him classified as being firmly in the Friend Zone, but he will be thinking "oooohhhh yeahhhh!".
Fuck that. In circumstances like this, where there's some ambiguity in the situation, I pay for myself. No way do I let the guy pick up the tab. It's all about control.
Pshaw. There's a difference between being surprised with an invite and actually going to meet someone. Feel free to insert "surprise sex" joke here.
I almost never reject a guy asking me out unless they really repulse me to go along with my general rule of trying not to turn down opportunities. You never know what could happen, I'm not that busy and important that I don't have an hour or two to spare in a week, and if nothing else at least I usually get a free drink/coffee/meal out of it, and/or a good story. (There was even a time when I went out with a guy I knew I'd hate...a self-proclaimed "Model/Actor"... for the story alone, and he did not disappoint. Best Worst Date of my life.) But, when it comes to rejecting guys that I've started dating, their crippling insecurities always seem to take care of that for me. This is how thing ended with three of the guys I dated this year: 1: I was waiting to get on the train to go to a friend's party when he texted me asking if I wanted to hang out with him. I responded "Sorry, but I'm going to my friend's party." He says: "Are you really going to your friend's party, or are you just done with me?" I say: "Well, I was telling the truth, and this isn't exactly the way I'd planned to do this, but yes." That was Valentine's Day weekend. 2. We had gone on a few dates. He texted me asking if I wanted to go to the show he was working that night. I didn't exactly want to go to work with him nor continue dating him, so I told him I was busy, which was the truth because I had another date. And I never heard from him again. 3. I was dating this guy for a while. It was kind of sad because I was really enjoying it for the first couple of dates and then that lame thing happened where I discovered that he actually sucked hard. He texted me on Thanksgiving to ask me how my holiday was going. I didn't get the text until hours later because, well, I was with my family and not checking my phone. And I didn't want to start a conversation either because, again, I was kind of enjoying the day with my family. And I never heard from him again. Yes, because I wasn't able to hang out with them one time, or because I didn't respond to one of their texts for the first time ever, these guys got so scared and upset that they ran away. It's pathetic. But at least it was really easy for me!
Hold on, am I missing something? Based on your post it seems like the guys just got the point and moved on.
Maybe it's just me but I don't roll over on the first try unless it's 100% obvious she isn't into me. For guy #2 she said she was busy. Although this could have gone either way (because most often women will offer another day), I would have tried at least once more to be certain she was not into me. For guy #3, if she was enjoying her Holiday, I would probably not expect a response fairly soon. If I liked the girl enough to go on several dates with her, why end it when she didn't respond to ONE text? I'd owe it to myself to at least follow through and find out if she wasn't into me or was just busy.
I guess the insecure people I've met are the types that tend to flip and call 15 times per day rather than just giving up on their to-be ex. If a girl is disintersted it's usually not that hard to pick up on, especially after a few dates. It doesn't mean a guy is a basket case if they stop calling. Or maybe they weren't that enthused with the relationship either.