> There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.

I'm a self-taught software developer with no university education and I too am socially awkward in front of tradespeople in my house. I don't think this is about Ivy League degrees, just being a nerdy intellectual who's bad at small talk and doesn't have any topics in common with a blue collar worker.

100%. The conversation opener is right there - baseball.

Doesn't matter whether you follow baseball or not. If you do, have a back-and-forth and talk about your respective teams. If you don't, ask questions; fans love talking about their team.

Ironically the ability to make small talk with anyone is considered a sign of good breeding. So this person's education may have failed them?

>just being a nerdy intellectual who's bad at small talk and doesn't have any topics in common with a blue collar worker

I'm an autistic tech nerd and even I never run out of things to talk to with blue collar people. Blue collar people aren't aliens, they're like you and me, they also watch Netflix, browse the internet, go outside, travel, go shopping, have relationships, raise their kids, there's a lot we have in common to talk about: the economy, politics issues, tax issues, news, cars, power-tools, CoL issues, what their kids are doing, etc.

In fact, often, their lives were more interesting than mine, with a lot of travelling the world on random jobs, since they don't give a f about "a gap in the resume" or being labeled a "job hopper", they just do what they want.

So if you can't find absolutely anything in common with blue collar people to talk about, might be an issue on your end you might want to adress.