Microblog Memes

Not only do people not read, they don’t listen either.

Wrong. They don’t listen in the specific circumstance you expected them to listen. The beginning of a conversation isn’t meant to carry information. It only sets up the communication channel. The thing people are “listening” to are: Is the other person loud enough? Are they speaking my language? Do they have an accent that requires special attention from me to understand?

When people call a store, they expect the first few seconds of dialogue to be a greeting, which can be ignored; the name of the store, which they know; some phrase to indicate politeness, which they don’t care about; and then either silence or some other indication that the other end is now ready to process their request.

These expectations have been hammered into their brains for years by every store they have ever called. You are the odd one out. By trying to be extra helpful and give them what they want, you throw them off. Of course they need to recover, because the plan they had for how the conversation was to be going needs readjustment.

This also assumes that the callers had a chance to understand what you were saying in the first seconds. The first syllable or so of a conversation might be cut off because the line isn’t established quickly enough (which throws off the processing of the rest of the sentence). Their phones might not be set loud enough for the volume you’re transmitting. You might have fallen victim to the disease every person who regularly says the same things on the phone suffers from: You rattle off your script so quickly (and mumblingly) that the other person doesn’t understand.

All this is based on my experience and theory on how communication works. Don’t take it for granted. I’m no expert.