Is it really so inappropriate to ask somebody about their job? 

Most of us like to think of small talk as pretty universal. I’d be willing to bet that you could walk into any office in America and ask the employees, «What did you think of the season finale of The Pitt, and at least one of them would have something to say about it. But I know there have to be areas of the country where nobody in an office has even heard of The Pitt, let alone watched it. Small talk can be incredibly region-specific, and I’m not just talking about, «Did you catch the game last night?» Although «the game» could refer to any number of sporting events depending on where you live, it’s a largely universal tool of small talk because sports are a safer topic than politics or religion. 

In the Queen City of Cincinnati, 40-year-old adults will ask someone they just met, «Where did you go to high school?» They ask that before they even ask whether someone is from Cincinnati, because it’s assumed that nearly everyone in Cincinnati went to high school in Cincinnati. The asker assumes they know all the high schools in the city well enough to make some judgment about someone’s personal history based on the answer to that question, which is, understandably, strange for someone who is not from there. What kind of adult reps their high school into middle-age unless they work at their alma mater? The adults in mid-sized midwestern cities do!