NT Style Conversations (Read Between the Lines)

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I find it amusing how NT conversations often include coded messages. They do not want to say things directly many times. For example, I heard the following between a grocery cashier and a customer at check out. (May be slightly different)

Customer: I'll pay for this chocolate candy (She was eating at the time.)
Cashier: (Cheerfully as if joking) You have to. You have no choice.
Customer: I like to eat chocolate. It keeps you from being mean.
Cashier: (Unintelligible, but something conciliatory.)

Have you noticed this tendency?

I notice this, a lot. What's with that?

i actual know how to read between the lines, just what is said makes no sense at time,

How does chocolate keep a person, from being mean?

i agree. it is most frustrating when they are talking to me in this way.

most times all i know to say back is a flat "ok".

i don't like the game they try to play.

Oh, my mother would do things like that. She would always laugh in a fake, mirthless way whilst saying something serious to me, which I always found quite grating. I don't know what she was trying to do exactly, but it certainly didn't work.

"Customer: I'll pay for this chocolate candy (She was eating at the time.)
Cashier: (Cheerfully as if joking) You have to. You have no choice.
Customer: I like to eat chocolate. It keeps you from being mean.
Cashier: (Unintelligible, but something conciliatory.)"

What is the "coded message" from this?

I think that maybe the customer was making a (LAME) jab at the cashier for saying she HAD to pay, she had no choice.

Anyway, maybe she was referring to how chocolate causes similar chemical reactions as sex, "love, general happiness (dopamine, serotonin. From Wiki.: "Phenethylamine, an endogenous alkaloid sometimes described as a 'love chemical... it is quickly metabolized by monoamine oxidase-B and does not reach the brain in significant amounts"). Honestly though, I really don't think it effects MUCH. It tastes good, many people get happy feelings when eating something tasty. I think it's a simple as that.

So what happens if you eat a bunch of chocolate and take an MAOI?

Took me a few moments to see the joke - if chocolate stops you from being mean then you'll willingly pay for the chocolate. Then there's the "you have to, you have no choice" which I think is a mild, friendly put-down. I've learned to do those put-downs reasonably well........it's easier in real life because on a good day I can probably pick it up if the recipient has taken my put-down to heart, and I can counter it by saying something like "I don't mean it, I think you're brilliant." When it works, I feel a great sense of identity with the other person that I doubt I could get in any other way. The technique is never completely without risk but by keeping the subject matter reasonably wacky and outrageously unlikely, it usually endears rather than offending.