ABSTRACT
Imagine you are doing some last-minute grocery shopping and plan to get home to watch something that you consider appointment television—this may be anything from The Bachelor to a big football game. As you approach the checkout line, you run into an acquaintance with whom you have not had a conversation in quite some time. You reach out your hand, exchange pleasantries, and ask the question, “How have things been?” Your acquaintance, let’s call him Steve, proceeds to share with you an honest response to your polite, open-ended question. You learn that he is now out of a job, has recently lost a loved one, purchased a puppy, and found a new significant other online. Now that you are engaged in the conversation, it would be rude to reroute the talk or abruptly end the dialogue. So before you can move on with checking out your items, 25 minutes pass and your once well-construed plans of watching a particular television show have now been significantly altered.
