First of all, I learned that in my apartment, silence is not golden. Rather, silence is a sign that somebody is eating your shoes, pooping on your carpet, or joyfully ripping threads out of the bathmat. The noise of squabbling dogs, however irritating, is ideal, as it allows one to know AT ALL TIMES the whereabouts of said dogs.
Secondly, I learned that there are three things you can say when pursuing a person of the opposite sex to make them HIGHLY uncomfortable:
1. “You scare me.”
2. “I couldn’t pay you to flirt with me. Speaking of that, how much would I have to pay you to flirt with me?”
3. “I’ve noticed that your average bathroom visits have increased by roughly a minute, and I was just wondering if everything was okay.”
If for some reason you wanted to blow your chances without even opening your mouth, you could gasp awkwardly the moment you see the person in the hallway at work, and then hurry away without speaking. That pretty much classifies you as being really weird. I know. I watched it happen.