Some skills stay with you for life. Once you learn to ride a bike or tie your shoes, you don’t need to worry about refreshers. But other, more specialized skills fade over time without use.
One woman said a social skill she once used daily no longer came to her—just when she needed it most.
‘I’m standing there, and this middle-aged man walks up to me’
Content creator Carly Howard (@carlyyhoward) shares a post about an encounter at a coffee shop. Her video has since accumulated more than 41,000 views.
Howard says she went to hot yoga over the weekend and then stopped for coffee.
“Obviously I was disgustingly sweaty, so I didn’t put a cover-up on,” Howard says. “I just walked into the coffee shop in my cute little workout set. I [ordered], I’m standing there, and this middle-aged man walks up to me.”
According to Howard, he complimented her by saying she looked “amazing,” then asked what her workout routine was.
“I blacked out because I realized it had been so long since I received an unsolicited compliment from a man,” Howard says. “When I worked on the golf course, this was my everyday. I was so good at being nice and friendly while revealing absolutely no information about my life. I could deflect any question.”
Howard says she used to have mastery over this sort of deflection. If a man asked where she lived, she’d vaguely answer “around here.” If he asked what she was doing after work, she’d shut it down by saying, “going home.” And if a man ever asked if she had a boyfriend, the answer was always, always a resounding “yes.”
But her skills had slipped since then.
“Apparently these skills are perishable because this man asked me what I do to work out. You know what I did?” Howard says. “I told him my yoga studio, the actual studio. I just volunteered this information. Like, here’s where I go multiple times a week.”
Howard says the realization hit as soon as she walked away.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, Carly, what did you just do?’” Howard says. “Apparently I need to go back through beverage cart girl training because I have completely lost my edge.”
How are beverage cart attendants trained to handle unwanted attention?
This sort of process appears to be more informal than codified. Golf Digest reported in 2015 that new “cart girls” learn from more experienced co-workers, rather than from formal training.
They also generally work without a manager on the course, so when a golfer crosses a line, the cart girl handles it alone. Romantic or lewd advances are common, but as cart girls told the magazine regarding male customers, “the tone for the conversation is set within the first 30 seconds.” Redirecting flirtatious conversations quickly tends to end unwanted attention, while playing along invites more.
Other first-person accounts describe similar dynamics. A 2025 first-person essay on ShoutOut! JMU condemned the practice of primarily hiring young women for beverage cart service.
BroBible reported in 2025 that Virginia cart worker Alex Carroll said older men hit on cart workers the most. It later reported in 2026 that cart girl Kayla Brooke said a golfer made sexual remarks and asked her age after she told him where a restroom was. She later said that management handled it and banned the golfer.
@carlyyhoward
Subplot News reached out to Howard via email.
