People who ‘read’ others for a living share what they can pick up on about someone in 10 seconds

As you gain experience in a job, you develop strong gut feelings about your profession. Whether it’s the work you do or the people you work with, you learn to read situations before they happen because you’ve seen the same scenario play out time and time again. This gut feeling can transform into an innate ability to read people because you’ve seen a version of them thousands of times before—whether it’s dealing with salespeople, students, customers, patrons at a bar or restaurant, or patients in a healthcare space. Recently, a Redditor asked on the Ask Reddit subforum, “People whose job is to read strangers for a living (poker dealers, bartenders, TSA agents, loss prevention): what’s the tell you clock in the first 10 seconds that people don’t realize they’re broadcasting?” A retail loss prevention worker. Photo credit: Canva The post went viral, earning nearly 6,000 responses from people across various industries, from insurance to customer service. The common takeaway is that they see the same types of people every day and have a keen eye for spotting those who are up to no good. Here are nine ways that people in various professions have learned to read strangers. 1. There’s no ‘no reason’ “Family law attorney here: when a potential client explains something with ‘and then for NO REASON’ … there’s always a reason, and it is usually because that person did something shi**y.” “A jaded EMT I knew once used the term SOCMOB for people who got themselves injured in dubious circumstances. ‘And there I was, Standing On the Corner, Minding MY OWN BUSINESS.’” “I’m a doctor, and we’d call it ‘night church.’ Amazing how many people were coming home from church at 2 am then getting jumped out of nowhere.” 2. The retail stance “I used to work at the return desk at Target, and I could tell who was going to yell at me based on how they stood in line.” “Flashback to my retail job where I’d see someone with ‘The Stance’ three people back and start sweating, hoping someone else would come open their till before I had to deal with them.” 3. Dead giveaway they’re carrying “Various private security roles: someone who is carrying a weapon, who isn’t proficient at carrying weapons, will be constantly fidgeting around wherever it’s concealed to reassure themselves that it’s still there. Caught more than a few knives from people nervously playing with their pockets.” The private security person who posted on Reddit wasn’t far from the truth. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the easiest way to tell if someone is holding a weapon is that they will repeatedly touch or adjust an area, usually on their waistband, or walk asymmetrically to keep the weapon from moving. They will also instinctively keep touching the item to stabilize it and keep it from dropping. A shoplifter. Photo credit: Canva 4. They’re going to steal something “I was loss prevention for a large retailer for around four or five years. Watching people on camera most of the time. But one thing that always got me to pay attention to a person was if they were looking at people more than products. Somebody who is there to buy something is looking at shelves or signs. Most people don’t eye up everyone around them and get a lay of the land of who is where.” “I used to work at Kohl’s as a cashier, and I caught people shoplifting simply because I caught them looking at me instead of looking at the clothes. I’m not particularly attractive; no reason to be sneaking a peek at me. I’d call LP, and he’d watch them stick something down their shirt or into their purse, and then I’d watch him whisk them away as they tried to leave. $40 bonus on my paycheck every time I helped catch someone, heyo!” Loss Prevention Magazine adds that people likely to shoplift often appear nervous and have unnatural eye movements. They may also show strange shopping patterns, such as moving merchandise from one end of the store to another, and shop with little regard for an item’s color, size, or price. They are also known to dress “out of season.” 5. Disney Princess reveal “I used to be a Princess at Disney World, and I could tell which kid had loving, interactive, and invested parents within 30 seconds… I could tell the type of home life of a child just by how they interacted. There is a huge difference between kids who are shy, especially around a lady with a huge dress/hair/makeup, kids who are left alone/not read to/not fully interacted with and not truly spoken to by caregivers, and children who have parents that are fully invested in raising them. It is so, so apparent and we talk about it backstage. It is something we are all able to pick up on.” Snow White and a young girl. Photo credit: Flickr/JoePenniston 6. Watch the baseline “Therapist in a dual-diagnosis program (substance use + mental health). Any move from baseline is something to pay attention to. Calm and depressed to bright and happy? Bad sign. Words not aligning with expressions or tone of voice, e.g., ‘I’m doing better’ with closed posture, avoidant eye contact, flat tone = maybe not okay. Mostly though, if you let people talk long enough they’ll tell on themselves. Especially if they think they’re the smartest person in the room.” 7. The people who are worse off are always nicer “Not quite sure if it’s what you’re asking, but as a medical worker (2 years as a general pathology collector, 1 year as a specialist’s secretary), the chemo patients, frequent fliers, and those who have experienced a loss are the calmest, chattiest, and most grateful people. The ones who get shi**y at us for having to wait any amount of time for their tests and appointments are invariably the luckiest, healthy people in the clinic. It’s absolutely priceless when an oncology patient jumps up when some average Joe is screaming in my face about wait times and informs them I’m doing my best, and they come every week because they have cancer. The worst off people in the room are always the kindest.” 8. “I go to church” “Talking about attending church in the first sentence. (Indicates impending lying in the next few sentences.) Me, an insurance adjuster.” That someone would do something morally questionable but preface it with the fact that they regularly attend church is a well-known tactic to psychologists. It combines two psychological phenomena: extrinsic religiosity, where people use religion for its social benefits rather than self-improvement, and moral licensing, where people believe doing something good gives them a pass for something dubious. 9. Screen time tells “I’m a teacher. It is INCREDIBLY obvious which kids have unregulated Algorithm time and which do not. It’s not screen time, it’s not the Internet, it’s WHAT they’re doing on the screen…. social media and shorts. They are always talking far too loudly, trying to get attention in every room. They will play videos on speaker in class… They will lose focus and get bored or frustrated even if I am up there doing a full stand up bit. If they finish their work early, they run to me to ask what to do now because they need the next thing instantly fed to them. Kids with limited or focused Internet time are usually calmer, better at solving problems, okay with not getting instantly rewarded. They’re cool reading books or drawing or hanging out and talking with others.” “I’m the computer teacher, and we do an assignment where kids log their screen time. When the numbers are revealed, it’s like ‘yep, makes sense.’”