Do you prefer "qualifiers" when hearing bad news? ("Don't get mad, but...")

In My Humble Opinion
1

So a friend of mine (who I spend a lot of time with), when telling someone something they probably don’t want to hear, always prefaces it with someone like “Don’t get mad, but…” or “You’re not going to want to hear this, but…”. (I call these things “qualifiers”) There’s always what seems like a long, almost dramatic pause before she goes on. She’s done this to me a couple of times and it drives me batty; I don’t want to have to wait for what feels like an eternity to hear the bad news. Usually, the prefacing statement and ensuing pause are worse than what she’s telling me. I know she does it to “prepare” people so whatever they have to hear isn’t so shocking. I know that she does it be kind rather than annoying, but GAH! If I had to be the bearer of bad news, I’d probably say in a soft-ish voice “Um, hey, so-and-so”, then just tell them whatever it is. This way, the soft voice catches their attention, so they know to listen carefully. Also, they get to hear whatever it is rather than waiting for me to finish a pause. Personally, I think this is a much better way to go about things, but I could be wrong. Does my method seem insensitive? How would you prefer to be given bad news*? With a prefacing statement and time to get prepared to hear it or skip all that, you just want to know what the heck it is?

*When I say bad news, I’m not talking about anything truly serious. i.e. “There’s been a car accident and people you love are dead.” More along the lines of “Hey, dad, guess who got an F in calculus?”

2

“Don’t get mad, but…” is so patronizing and arrogant that it would probably get me from 0 to rage in about 10 seconds. Way to 1) assume you know exactly how I will respond and 2) tell me my feelings are not valid. Even worse if it’s just prefacing some stupid shit that I wouldn’t have gotten mad about anyway.

So it would pretty much have the opposite of the desired effect. That’s just bad strategy.

3

I think what is annoying about “don’t get mad but…” is it is telling you how to react. I also find it annoying when someone beats around the bush.

In fact, generally I find it extremely annoying when someone is giving me some news, and they won’t just come out with.

“Hi, well, so, here’s the thing, I was driving downtown, and then, it was raining, and then, well, this is kind of hard to explain…”

instead of

“I have something serious to tell you. I am fine and no one was injured, but I was in a car accident just a few minutes ago. The car has a pretty big dent in it.”

One time I had a family member kind of mumbling through an explanation of something like this that had happened, and I interrupted and said “are you ok, yes or no? Is the car ok, yes or no.” And I insisted that he answer those two yes or no questions before telling me anything else. It pissed him off at the time, but I could not tell whether I needed to call an ambulance, etc., and he was taking a long time to come to the point.

Now, having said that, I do think it is often helpful to use a phrase to at least put the person in the right frame of mind to hear what you have to say, especially when you are talking on the phone and they can’t tell from your facial expression/ body language that you have something serious to tell them.

“Frank, we’ve talked it over and I’m afraid I don’t have good news. We are not going to be able to provide that loan that you were looking for. [go on to explain reasons for your decision.]”

Now, it’s an entirely different matter when someone is coming to me asking advice about a problem. Frequently I find that in that situation they also beat around the bush, add lots of qualifiers, etc. What I try to do then, (although I’m not always successful) is just to let them tell their whole story, the way they want to tell it. THEN I ask questions.