“I’m not sure if we’ve met before…?”

I should have known more people from the online meetings, but I’m not that good at recognising faces – or remembering names. So, I decided to greet everyone, as I was thinking, “They might know me, but I might not recognise them!” I was cautious and felt a bit isolated, because many other people were so happy to see each other and able to reconnect.

Then one day, someone walked up to me and said, “How are you doing?”, and started telling me about his family – but I didn’t know his name! And the more he talked about his personal life, the more frustrated I became, thinking that I had completely forgotten about him!

As he went on to talk about some kind of technical implementation, I didn’t really get it, but just went along with it anyway. Then suddenly he stopped, looked at me and said, “We don’t know each other, do we?” And I had to agree!

He was quite embarrassed, but didn’t need to be, as he actually made me feel like I was not alone in trying to connect with people. And we did have a good chat for about ten minutes, before we realised…

Now, I have a better technique: if I spot someone from a distance, I will look up their picture on Teams and compare it to reality – and only then go and speak to them. Also, when I meet someone for the first time, I’ll say something like, “I’m not sure if we’ve met before…?”