Communication Pet Peeves

Is bad communication a virtue these days?

Verbal:
*Talking too softly
*Talking too fast
*Speaking in slang that I don’t understand
*Speaking in metaphors
*Inane chatter :mad: "At 7:11 this morning I got out of bed. 7:15 I brushed my teeth and I use cool mint crest toothpaste. At 7:37 I ate breakfast, I drunk Pevely’s 2% milk one day past expiration, and I put too much pepper on my eggs. OR “Ooh, look at those curtains over there, it’s red and has 17 yellow dots, my great grandmother used to have something similar. Have you ever wondered how they make curtains?”
*People who talk so much that you can’t get a word in.

Phone:
*People talking to loud on the phone. You can pull the phone 3ft from you and still hear every word they said.
*People smacking on food, flushing toilets, popping gum, etc.

Non-verbal:
When people fail to pick up on other folks’ nov-verbal communication. I’ve also noticed these people are usually the same people use inane chatter. Don’t you hate it when you’re in an anti-social mood and you sling to a corner to sit alone…and guess what? Someone (usually a stranger), seeks you out and talks to you about their dogs having fleas for about an hour. They don’t pick up on your lack of eye-contact, short answers or yes/no answers, lack of questioning, etc.

I’m amazed when people do not realize that others can often hear both sizes of most phone conversations. They will be pretending to talk to a business person and you can hear kiss-kiss coming out of the earpiece.

Bloody text messaging abbreviations and people who don’t capitalise the letter ‘I’

Not with me! I also cannot understand people who leave their return tel. number on my voice mail at a very fast rate, so that I must listen to their message several times to figure out their number. :mad:

No matter which medium is used, I can’t stand it when people use French or Latin words and phrases. I don’t know what 99% of them mean and I can’t derive their meanings from context. Please, people, stick to English!

With verbal communication I get annoyed by people who talk too softly, especially on the phone. One would think that after having to ask the other person to repeat himself/herself several times, this might be a good indication to speak a little louder! Mumblers also annoy the shit out of me.

I also can’t stand people who ramble on endlessly, repeating things over and over, especially if it is something I am not interested in. If it’s in email I can easily skip over it. If it’s in person I can give the other person some clues, such as fidgeting, looking at my watch, etc. On the phone it’s hard to come up with a good-sounding reason to tell the other person I need to go when, in fact all I want to do is just get the hell rid of them so they don’t bore me to death.

i also h8 ppl who abbrev ther msgs lik this w/o punc or cap & its hard 2 read

Closely related to the above are people who overuse messaging acronyms (LOL, ROTFLMAO, OTOH, etc.) I can tolerate it to a degree (I use IIRC a lot myself), but I feel they should be used sparingly.

“Comprise” when they mean “Compose”.
“Nu-cu-ler” when they mean “Nuclear”.
“Hysterical” when they mean “Hilarious”.
“'n” or “n’” when they mean “‘n’”.
“Coincidence” when they mean “Only a coincidence”.