I am not saying that you are going to meet women going about your day at the workplace. What I am saying is you can meet women going about your day if you are out in a retail store, grocery store, etc. or if you have dinner somewhere and begin chatting up a woman who is sitting at the restaurant bar.
It's possible for this to happen. It's not that likely. Most men don't have a good enough daily routine for it to happen.
For men that work in large buildings with multiple tenants, it's possible to find a woman working in the same building for a different company and set up a date with her/get her number. I did this multiple times in the 2010s. With more white collar work being shifted to work at home, it's more challenging to do this now but not impossible. Blue collar men will have a more difficult time with this because blue collar/manual labor workplaces have fewer women.
The grocery store is a different place in pickup mode vs. non-pickup mode. If I just want to grocery shop, I can complete a visit to a typical grocery store in about 25-30 minutes. In those 25-30 minutes, I might not see a viable target. If I am doing an approach session in a grocery store, I will intentionally slow my time in the store. I might spend 60-75 minutes getting what I need. I will need to linger longer in order to find viable approach targets. Roosh even mentioned in "Day Bang" that it wouldn't be abnormal to spend 3 hours in a grocery store doing an approach session in order to get enough prospects to talk for a few minutes and agree to a date. No one normally is spending 3 hours in a grocery store.
Because cold approach is inefficient, numerous women who get approached and actually agree to a date/give out their number will also flake prior to the date. Most women won't actually engage beyond 30 seconds in most indoor approach settings, which is an insufficient amount of time to determine if a date is worthwhile. Most men need more volume of approaches, which is where dedicated approach sessions become a reality.
Men do not tend to go to dinner as much with friends and would have fewer opportunities to do the approach you describe. Men tend to spend time with their friends in activities such as hunting, fishing, auto repair, tennis, or golf. Good luck meeting women with those hobbies. Tennis and golf are the least of the sausage fests there but even those two activities don't lend themselves to meeting a lot of women.
I also never made it a point to go out cold approaching for the sole sake of cold approaching. I know a lot of men, including other members on SS, do just that. However, I like to have another purpose for the trip whether that is I am out shopping or I am at the bar we are at with some buddies. It always makes the conversation much more free flowing.
A slower grocery store approach session does result in me collecting groceries.
I have done sessions in the mall where I didn't buy anything in any mall stores.
I have tried come cold approaching at the gym - but I generally stick to just getting my workout done there.
The gym is a tough venue mainly because of the earbud factor. Fitness classes are the big workaround to the earbud factor and offer great ratios but result in fewer dates than most men would expect from a female majority setting.
In thinking about the general gym floor, most men are in the weight lifting section, which is more male than female. The few females there are wearing earbuds and are looking for men with
@sangheilios type physiques. 6'0"+ and muscular. Those men will have an easier time of getting women's attention and getting them to remove their earbuds. Most men aren't hanging around the ellipticals or treadmills either and trying to get the attention of earbud wearing women in that part of the gym.