"Why Can't Washingtonians Resist Asking Each Other What They Do For A Living?"

"she wrote about what she calls the "second question": the thing you ask after asking someone how they’re doing.

"If you call someone in St. Louis and say what’s your second question, they’ll say, ‘Where did you go to high school?’ If you call somebody in Greenville, South Carolina, they’ll say, ‘Where do you go to church?’ And if you call somebody in New Orleans, they’ll say, ‘Who’s your momma?’ The one in Washington is definitely, ‘Where do you work?’" she tells me, adding that the question is often asked in New York as well.

Fallows says these "second questions" are a way for people to put strangers into context, to make quick sense of them and to better understand how they might fit into their world. The questions often reflect the culture or characteristics of the place where they are being asked, she says...

But Fallows says the question isn’t always really about your job. In fact, she says there's a subtle pretext to the question that speaks to the culture of Washington, the political town.

"I think it’s a power question. When you’re just getting to meet someone the ‘Where do you work?’ and saying ‘Well, I work for the finance committee’ or ‘I work for the no-name committee’ gives you a lot of the answer," she says.

http://m.wamu.org/#/news/16/01/13/why_cant_washingtonians_resist_asking_each_other_what_they_do_for_a_living

Absolutely - there's a piece of it that is "can I make a connection here?"

Also, it's so weird for me to read this and miss DC. It probably speaks to my darker nature...