It’s become a natural reaction that when someone tells me I need to attend an event or party where I know I won’t know many people my first reaction is immediately to cringe, make a kind of guttural moaning noise and roll my eyes. When you spend the entire day working the last thing you want is to have to work your brain even further trying to make small talk with people who are presumably incredibly boring. Of course it’s fine to make these kinds of sweeping generalizations because before you really know someone they are a closed door. And the pessimist that I am, I imagine there to be nothing but inane conversation and information about things I really don’t care about past that door.