If you like to meet new people, you may get lots of coffee and lunch invitations.

You'll meet wonderful people and learn a ton when you broaden your coffee and lunch horizons. However, a few cautionary words are in order.

There are people who will invite you to lunch or coffee in order to talk (only). To these networkers, you could be yourself, or any living person sitting across the table from them in Starbuck's or The Cork. Your purpose, you will find, is to sit, listen, chew your food and murmur "Mmm, no kidding" at periodic intervals. If you're having coffee rather than lunch, you won't even have your food to distract you; in that case, your only function is to sip and keep quiet. (And listen, and nod your head.)

A victim of the "sit still and be my audience" phenomenon more than once, I finally hit on a way to escape captive one-way life-story networking imprisonment situations.

It works well for lunch. You'll have to invent your own method, for coffee; I don't drink coffee anymore, so I'm off the hook in that department.

It's called the Entree Rule; it's simple.

If you go to a restaurant and sit down and your lunchmate begins to talk about himself or herself, and you don't interrupt, and he or she continues to relate his or her life story without pause, be patient. At some point, the waiter will take your drink order, then bring your drinks. At some point, the waiter will come back and take your lunch order. Sit some more, and bide your time. Eventually, the waiter will bring your entrees, and deposit them on the table.

For a typical lunch date, 20 to 30 minutes will have elapsed when your entrees arrive. That means that your lunch partner has talked nonstop about himself or herself for close to half an hour. That's okay. No problem yet.

Here's the kicker: if your lunchmate doesn't stop, when the entree plates hit the table, and exclaim "My goodness! Look how long I've been talking! That's all for me -- I'm dying to hear about YOU!," then you will have hit an invisible but terribly important wall.

If this person's instinct to stop talking and listen doesn't kick in when the entrees arrive, it never will. You are done for, a cooked goose, an aural pincushion. However, you are a grown-up person with options, and don't have to subject yourself to this kind of dining ordeal. (Hear the voice of experience talking?)

Here's what to do: Signal for the waiter, and say "Please bring the check; I'm afraid I'm terribly late for my next appointment."

Your lunch partner will be shocked; perhaps a little shock will do him or her good. In any case, it's not your problem; you paid your good-listener dues in the first half hour. You'll present a credit card, instructing the waiter to bring your check for half the lunch bill, and you'll sign on the dotted line and smile and leave. You'll feel weightless and free as you sashay out the door.

A person who will sail past the Entree Rule is a person your Rolodex will be happier without.

Liz Ryan is the CEO of Ask Liz Ryan, a Boulder human-resources and organizational strategy consulting firm. She can be reached at liz@asklizryan.com.