Thank you! Every time someone asks me "well why didn't you make a move when X happened?"

Because I didn't want to make the wrong guess and get pepper sprayed, punched, expelled, fired, whatever. Because 99% of the time they aren't into me at all and whatever signal I think I might be picking up on is entirely unintentional or imagined.

I always assume the other person isn't flirting, they're just being nice. Or competitive in this case. And assuming this has never once led to me getting lunched or pepper sprayed or anything, so I'd say it worked well.

Also I still got married, just asked someone I worked with if they wanted to go hiking one day and surprisingly they said yes. (honestly who goes hiking as a first date I could have been a serial killer)

If you can't be direct with the person you want to be romantic with, then why are you wanting to be closer to them?