Speech Patterns

I'm a linguist. I notice patterns of speech and I understand that people have manners of speaking which reflect the way they think. I try to be patient when someone says fifteen sentences with barely a breath or a pause. I try to be patient when people speak really, really slowly because their brains have to think about each word they're saying. I try to be patient with dialect, accent, and odd stresses. This is why my biggest pet peeve on the face of the Earth is interruption.

Interrupting someone frustrates that person. It can often confuse that person. I know it isn't always easy to be patient when a person takes two minutes to make a statement she could have said in thirty seconds. I know we don't always have two minutes to spare. But maybe that person can't complete a thought in thirty seconds. Maybe that person has trouble speaking. The fact is it doesn't matter. It's a sad world when we can't take the time to just listen to another human being and be patient.

I get frustrated almost to the point of tears at the smallest interruption. I have trouble finishing a sentence and often I pause where it feels like an ending is coming to think about how I'm going to end. A lot of people try to finish the sentence for me. I try, really hard, to understand that I've paused and they think it's okay to speak but I obviously didn't complete my thought because they feel they must complete it for me. Please don't. Often, nine times out of ten, I will follow up their suggestion with, "No, that's not what I was going to say." Nine times out of those nine times, they follow it up with another suggestion. Usually I get really quiet at this point and I kind of stare at them, not even answering whether they got it right this time. Nine times out of those nine times, the second suggestion is equally wrong. What I do is stay quiet, then when I've finally worked out how to word the ending how I wanted to I just state said ending and walk away.

Please don't try to offer a word when I'm struggling for the right word. Don't begin to bark seemingly related words at me. I see this often in my job, not just with myself. A customer will come in, need something like a shawl and be trying to describe a shawl, and it will go something like this:

Customer: I have a dress with spaghetti straps...
Coworker: So you need a sweater to go over it?
Customer: Not a sweater, but my arms are bare and I was thinking...
Coworker: More like a shrug? A really short one like this? What color?
Customer: (becoming frustrated) I don't want that either.
Coworker: So you want like a jacket?
Customer: (firmly) No.

But you know, at this point I would have walked out. I get a bit of flack from my fellow workers because when a customer is struggling to describe what she needs, I just let her struggle. I usually give a person about fifteen seconds to come up with a word she can't think of before I make one suggestion. If that isn't the right suggestion, I ask her one question. A good deal of the time the question acts as a trigger. If it doesn't I change the subject, but keep the subject related to the customer's needs. It has always worked out in the end.

When a person interrupts me to ask a question that would have been answered had she waited until I was finished speaking, I get extremely angry. I get short with that person. This happened today with a coworker, and right now I'm typing this through a splitting headache because the more this person did things like that the more visibly frustrated I became with her. She eventually confronted me, and when I expressed my feelings she said something like, "Well now I know you don't like being interrupted," which isn't an apology. Then she acted upset with me so I asked her if she was. She said she felt I had been condescending toward her. And I said I didn't mean to be but I didn't apologize and the really, really childish part is that I didn't apologize because she didn't either. Part of me feels really bad but part of me, the part that came home and bawled into my pillow, feels like her behavior isn't going to change, or like she's saying my frustration is my own problem.

I've tried to talk about this before with other coworkers and the consensus seems to be that interrupting is a common behavior and so I just need to deal with it. When I got written up earlier this year for correcting someone's grammar, I was told I had made that girl feel stupid. Correcting someone's grammar isn't a common behavior because it's how "smart" people try to show how smart they are and how stupid other people are. How this whole situation makes me feel is that it's okay to hurt my feelings. It's okay to make me frustrated. It's okay because it's me.

The funny thing is that I only corrected someone's grammar once. I did it because she was writing on a piece of paper the rest of the staff would see, and we were alone and it was an easy fix, and so I told her how to fix it so no one else would ever know she had used the wrong word. When I was told it hurt her feelings, I never corrected someone's grammar again. Not even in private. I respected her feelings. It's all I want out of everyone else.

When my coworker confronted me, I got really nervous because I knew I was going to have to tell her how she had upset me. And I knew she wasn't going to care how I felt. I almost started crying right there and I tried to tell her it was nothing, but she kept asking until I finally told her. The rest of the day was just awkward.

I've been asking myself over and over if it was all my fault. There was an earlier incident where she said I was curt with her, and maybe I was, and maybe that was a big misunderstanding and the interruptions just compounded the whole situation, but the interruptions are a daily thing from multiple people and so that part was not me just being overly sensitive. I would have apologized for the earlier incident had she apologized for the interruptions. (How "I know you are but what am I" was that whole sentence?)

But all-in-all I think it's a problem with the world right now. I think interrupting others is a form of saying, "My thought's more important than yours," or "You haven't given me all the information I need in the first five words." I often get short when I say five words like, "I was in the backroom..." and the other person says, "What were you doing back there?" but they don't say it like they're eager for the next part but like they missed where I said what I was doing back there. "What were you doing?" And I bite my lip and sometimes I say, "I haven't even begun the story yet." And they get upset. And then I feel bad. Except, you know, I shouldn't.

I just spent the last two hours venting into this little white screen. I know I'll feel better that I got it out somewhere. This all goes back to wanting people to listen to each other. I feel like this is sorely lacking in the world. Sometimes I wonder if I'm holding people to too high a standard. Or if I'm just a raging bitch and their behaviors are just fine. I don't know. I don't know.