Why do I still adjust myself for people I'll never see again?

You laugh a little too hard at the cashier's joke. You apologize to a chair you bumped into. You soften your order so the waiter won't feel bad the kitchen ran out of your first choice. None of these people asked you for this. Most won't remember your face in ten minutes. This isn't kindness. Kindness has a target — a real person whose day you're trying to improve. What you're describing is a reflex, aimed at whoever happens to be in the room. It fires the same whether the stranger is delighted or bored, remembered or forgotten by noon. That sameness is the tell. A signal this indiscriminate isn't measuring anything about them at all. It's measuring something in you — a low hum of worry that someone, anyone, might register the smallest flicker of disapproval. You're not managing their opinion. You're managing your own unease, and using their faces as a screen to project it on. If this feeling runs deep, or shows up as constant unease around others, it may help to talk it through with a counselor or therapist — someone trained to work through it with you further than a page like this can.