being alone in crowded public spaces.

now this pulled a comment from me. i am shit at commenting things, and usually keep my mouth (keyboard) shut. anyway. as far as i can remember myself from quite young age, i always preferred such way of 'socializing'. alone in crowded spaces, as you said. even if i am having few beers with my best friends at pub, at some point i start feeling urge to just leave them. say some obvious lie reason, pack my stuff and gone. usually to nearby pub, just on my own. preferably pub with live acoustic music, preferably jazz. this charges me back up in no time. can't even describe that weird mix of sadness and happiness at the same time happening in my head, when i have a chance to have a pint or eight alone, surrounded by strangers. as for the topic - i used to work in IT stores warranty repairs department (complaints department we called it), not at front of help desk, but some times i had to replace my colleague for lunch break. which was a worst nightmare for me even if that took one hour every few days. customers there are never happy, like 'wtf you just sold me, want me money back, shit company, shit product, blabla bla bla fuck this bla bla fuck that bla bla'. all pissed, angry, always right and know their rights. one or two customers and i'm flat. exhausted, barely walking, hands shaking, almost crying. hated it. now almost 20 years later, if i am looking for a job, i just keep skipping ads with keywords 'excellent communication skills', 'ability to communicate across all levels of the business', 'answering customer queries', 'telephone skills', etc. bit paradox, but my job now is systems administrator ('it guy' to be fair, sysadmin just on papers), supporting 60+ customers in this office, but this is completely different from interacting with strangers. people here know i am a 'man of few words', working for quite a while already and comfortable with most of them. every time bit of a challenge with new starters tho, usually awkward, but i am somewhat okay now.