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07 November 2007
Overhead on the bus this morning, from a guy in a pained cellphone conversation: "Look, I don't have time to listen to you, so just tell me what I can solve."
Totally sounds like something my father would say (although you couldn't get my father on a bus if you paid him). He thinks if you tell him about your problem you expect him to fix it. If its something he can't fix, he gets frustrated, like "why are you telling me about this then?" It used to bother me but now I find it equal parts hilarious and endearing.
haha! I thought it was funny, and read it out loud to my husband, who said, "what an asshole." And I said, "but look, maybe he's not arrogant asshole; maybe he's a guy who's basically low-level and whose duties are extremely circumspect, who doesn't need the whole back story - he just needs to know what they need fixed that he can do?"
From what I could tell, he was being an asshole. But I obviously couldn't hear what the other person (presumably his girlfriend) was saying, so he may have been justified in being an asshole.
It also seemed to be "Have contentious personal conversations very loudly in public" day on the bus. Christ, people. It's 8 o'clock in the morning, of course you're arguing with each other. Civilized people do not try to conduct difficult conversations at such an hour. Hang up, go have some coffee, and call back at noon.
Christ, people. It's 8 o'clock in the morning, of course you're arguing with each other. Civilized people do not try to conduct difficult conversations at such an hour.
Wait a minute . . . people actually do things at eight a.m.?
One of my consulting gigs was putting out brush fires for a sales group in HP. I used similar statements often, especially while addressing one of their staff meetings over a speaker phone. When my job is to turn around an underperforming quarter that ends in three weeks, I don't have a whole lot of patience, especially if it's because someone royally screwed up and everyone is trying to get their innocence on the record.
I loved that job but I swear it took ten years off my life.
A friend that I quite like has the habit of using this phrase when she is introducing another long clause in an already long story, with no evidence that she understands that she's not only not doing what she claims to be doing, but is actually using the phrase not to do it with. I love it.
If its something he can't fix, he gets frustrated, like "why are you telling me about this then?"
Heh, that could be me. Even when I say it, I realise how ridiculous it is, but it seems to be hard-wired into me that problems are to be solved and that the only reason you would share them is because you want help with a solution.
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