Being interrupted is right up there on my list of pet peeves, along with paper straws, napkins made from recycled material and one-ply toilet tissue.
I think it stems from the ugly-American-in-a-foreign-land practice of thinking if you just talk louder and repeat the same thing over and over, they'll understand what you're talking about. Even though they speak a different language.
Not always, but much more often than I'd like, I work in an industry that runs on equal measure of rudeness, ego, asinine comments, loud and I know better than you do.
It usually goes like this. You'll be in a conference room, either on your first or thirty-seventh meeting of the day. You have the floor and you're speaking. Without warning or reason, someone starts talking over you. Then another person joins the chorus. Pretty soon, they're not all just trying to talk over you, they're also jockeying to talk over each other.
They don't hear or care what you're saying, because, you know, what they're saying is So. Much. More. Important. It's like those drivers on the freeway who're behind you, pass you, then pull in front of you because that one car length makes All. The. Difference.
I hate those people. And I hate when it happens - in meetings, on the road and in real life.
Apparently I'm not the only one in advertising who hates this. Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, principals at the Kaplan Thaler agency in New York, wrote a book called The Power of Nice. In it, they point out the many times being nice in business has turned potential clients into actual ones. By the way, that's not the reason they suggest being nice - it's just a side benefit.
Don't get me wrong. There are many pleasant, decent, courteous people in the business who are just as frustrated by the rudeness and bad upbringing all too frequently on display.
They're just not in my meetings.
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