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Comment by noahmbarr | Hacker News Reader

Why not be honest and direct?

I'm senior enough, prior military and give few enough fucks that I have been able to try this repeatedly. I've tried various gradiations between polite and asshole, and in various situations.

At best, you get various promises to not be loud. You'll get maybe a day of relief, and then it's back to it again. You can be relatively harsh, and it's still temporary. You can also lobby to be pushed off to a corner where you're not exposed to the loudest people. At worst, you can _really_ piss people off; I raised enough of a stink that I know that one guy wanted me fired.

Some people have a very strong need to interact socially. One time I was on a long ride in a HMMWV and most of us were silent as we were relatively tired. One guy was one of those compulsive talkers, and on a lark, I timed how long it was before he started talking. After almost exactly 6 minutes of silence he would start talking and then trail off, it was very regular.

I think if you have someone like that, I think your best strategy is not to avoid them, but to fulfill their need on your terms. Invite them to go get coffee with you, or go for a walk. And then when you're done, hopefully that triggers their social cue to get back to work. If it doesn't, you can remind them, "well, I've just been out for five minutes, so I don't want the boss to think I'm fucking off work."

Because it doesn't always work. I had someone try to get me fired because she came into my office and said "do you have a minute?" and I said (because I was legitimately busy with something important) "No".

She was enraged that I didn't drop everything I was doing to listen to whatever problem she had, and went to complain to my manager, blithering about rudeness, and me not being a "team player".

Since my manger was the one who had assigned me the important work, he told her in polite manager-speak that I had done the right thing and that she should try again later if she still needed my help.

Someone asking you if you have a minute for something work related vs someone chatting your ear off about non-work related things isn't the same thing.

You are right, it is not.

The interruption and the resulting loss of productivity because of it however is the same in either case.

Focused work without interruption must be respected and enforced when needed. If you are bored at work, go ask for more work to do, I'd say.

Or do as I did when I was still in offices many years ago: politely and without raising your voice just ask the room directly: "Anyone up for 10 minutes coffee break?". If nobody would respond then I would still go at a balcony drinking my coffee alone. Nobody is mandated to listen to my blabber and I understood and respected that. It's rather amazing how many people didn't though.

My response was to

> Why not be honest and direct?"

In fact there was a guy at my previous job who would be much like that. The person who had been doing my job said he had had a word with his (and my) boss and asked him to come in one day and pointedly ask him to do something. Boss threw in a bonus and after he had gone out asked mr chatty to stop bothering him as he had so much work to get on with.

In my opinion, saying just "no" it's quite harsh. That can create distance instead of building team (respect, trust, good manners etc.).

In such situations I usually say something like "I'm very sorry but I'm extremely busy. Could you send me email with your issue, please? I'll come back to you as soon as I solve the problem".

It generally does work, unless they're psychopaths. Who would turn down a reasonable request to focus on work? You could also offer up another time to continue the conversation.

The same type of person that would be that inconsiderate of other people’s time in the first place. For many people that are that bad at reading social cues it won’t be interpreted as a reasonable request.

That's not even true. They may be bad at reading social cues (ie face expressions) but would respond to direct communication about the need to focus on work.

The level of bluntness one would need to get through to the typical blowhard described here is higher than many people are comfortable exercising except as a last-resort, bridges-burning nuclear option.

Certainly in the UK we'd tolerate all sorts of social torture before dreaming of "causing a fuss", although I appreciate OP is in the US!

To me this is just so sad. With a bit of empathy you can actually tell them that you are busy or not in the mood. It only gets awkward because or if you try saying it without saying it, if you show them you feel uncomfortable (in what could be a completely natural interaction between people in the same group who spend a significant amount of time around each other). The other person probably feels a bit lonely if they try to find somebody to talk to repeatedly. Of course, the direct approach works best if there actually is empathy, in the story here the only feeling shown for the other person is a pretty negative one.

I’m a non-claravoyant person and now a US->UK immigrant to boot. I often wonder how many people secretly hate me for doing something I’d be happy to change. Sigh...

Welcome! This should be all you need to thrive and succeed in our dangerously-repressed passive-aggressive culture:

https://www.anglotopia.net/british-identity/brit-humour-30-t...

There is a skill to giving feedback and a skill to receiving feedback and exercising both is emotional/communicative labor. Lots of people:

1) Have Unskillfully given feedback and seen that backfire on them or have no effect.

2) Given feedback to someone who unskillfully interpreted/listened to it and reacted badly.

3) Can’t be arsed to do the work of communicating clearly——possibly its hard for them to organize their conflicting feelings into words——They threfore choose to suffer rather than advocate for themselves.

4) Are afraid of the very very small but nonzero possibility of another person reacting with violence to them—and therefore remain silent rather than advocating for themselves.

Potential consequences, or perceived consequences, or just social anxiety.

Women in the industry are often punished for this.

> Somehow, I was not the usual target of this person's attentions. Unfortunately, my neighbor and friend was. He'd get the brunt of the blather and had no way out of it.

Of course, the guy could also be punished for the same behavior

I honestly don't think this is unique to women / I wonder if this isn't one of those stereotypes foisted on them.

The coworker (who was the target) in her story is male. I'm male, and I've had this very problem with male coworkers. (And nothing about this has ever struck me as having anything to do with sex or gender. As it is, most of my coworkers are male, so it's probably more a reflection of that than anything else.)

And to the parent's point of "why not be honest and direct?", at the point at which such things are being written… honesty and directness have been tried, and have already failed. Some people, even told bluntly "Sorry, I need to get some work done." will keep on…

Well, then he'd tell everyone you were standoffish and not sociable. Obviously, you are not a cultural fit or a team player.

Perhaps you have never worked with the type of person described in this post. They are relentlessly oblivious. Oversharing and monopolizing your time, every day, all day.

I quit a job to get away from someone like this who was in a management role.

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