Even at the age of 44, I still grapple with the concept of feeling comfortable with public interaction. It isn't so much that I am shy, bashful or afraid to speak to people in public, its just that I am mildly selfish and I really don't think I can be as honest as I'd like to be when these public interactions invariably go south.

For example, if I see a friend of mine in public while I'm walking down the street with headphones, I'd rather we just wave or head nod, and follow it up with a text, email or phone call later. That way we aren't totally ignoring each other and killing our respective vibes. But if I have to speak to you, remove an earbud or two, say "What's been up?" 20 times, and then listen to you blabber about some inane topic, it tends to be burdensome. Which brings me to yesterday at work...

I am friendly and affable at work, but I tend not to reveal too much about my life because that leads to nosy behavior, small talk and other things that feel slightly invasive to me. It is quite the delicate line to straddle, but I've done so with great aplomb in my 3 months of employment here. No one knows too much, I haven't been inconvenienced, and no one has been offended by my behavior. But yesterday, I decided to get fancy and compliment this woman on her hair.

She's about 50-55 years old, and up until this point, she opted to wear her hair pinned up or in a pony tail, which of course is well within her right. But this past weekend--maybe for Mother's Day--she went all out and it was quite evident that she was pleased with the results, because when she strolled into work yesterday, she was confident and wearing a fancy outfit. I noticed this, and I reflexively gave her a compliment about her hair. I thought she would say thank you and keep it moving, but I was mistaken.

She sat on my desk, got comfortable, and proceeded to tell me why she wears it up more than she wears it down, how long it took to get done, how it threw off her day, and how she was determined to look good and sexy when she came to work. I appreciated her candor, but her volume was way louder than I'm comfortable with and her five-minutes soliloquy lasted about four minutes too long for my liking. To make matters worse, when she saw me the rest of the day, she kept saying hi, or asking me what was for lunch, blah blah blah.

As I told my wife, this is the dirty underbelly of giving a woman a compliment. 80 percent of the time, she'll say thank you and keep it moving. But man when that 20 percent comes down...