In college a professor told us a story about visiting colleagues in the UK.

One of them mentioned to him that Americans like to go straight to that question and for him to hold off on asking people what they do for a living.

He said once it was far into the evening the colleague asked him what he thought of everybody and he said everyone was nice and it was a treasure to meet everyone.

Afterwards he went on to tell him what everyone did for a living and he was surprised about everyone's profession because he would have never guessed based on the conversations he had with them.

He said it was refreshing not knowing one's profession as you end up judging a person based on that information.

This professor was old, so I'm sure 20 years ago in college for me, it was 20 - 30+ years ago for him.