*tl;dr * had a coworker who I considered to be pretentious and a bit of a Nice Guy™ based on first impressions and tried to completely freeze him out. realized he was actually great and hilarious after teaching him to play a nerdy card game, have been friends for 5 or 6 years now.

I used to work at a corporate chain that sold loose-leaf tea, and we had one regular who would come in and make small talk with us. he eventually ended up getting hired to work as our barista on weekends and I think the first shift we worked together I mentioned something about Tolkien or elves (basically something that indicated I was into fantasy) and his response was “wow, you’re a really interesting girl.” immediate reaction: oh, you’re one of those. after that, he would aggressively try to befriend me while I would completely shut him down. for context, I have chronic depression and at the time also had pretty severe social phobia so I was uninterested in human interaction outside of the necessities (work, class, etc). one thing he often brings up now is that he remembers asking me “are we friends?” and me looking him dead in the eye and saying “nope.”

the turning point was one day when we went to a coworker’s birthday party at a bar and I gave him a ride back to his car afterward. the other coworker lived in the same apartment building as me and he realized he had left his keys in her apartment. so while we waited for the party to end I invited him to hang out at my apartment and ended up teaching him to play magic the gathering. pretty soon we started hanging out more often and I realized I had misjudged him based on my first impression. he’s one of my closest friends now and we’ve helped each other through so much, including mental illness on both sides, general friendship/relationship drama, and losing pets. he did have some Nice Guy-ish tendencies when we first met, but I still feel bad about immediately jumping to conclusions based on what was probably just an awkward comment.