Melbourne: I wouldn’t be comfortable with the distractive technique you describe. It’s too non-responsive. It turns a conversation into two separate monologues.
I’d prefer to engage the question, while gently taking away its power.
Q: What does ‘fine’ mean?
A: Shrug. It means great, fine, good, super. I feel kinda super today. I’m sure you’ve had both good days and bad.
To me, a string of questions is no problem at all: it offers me a chance to blither. So long as the guy is actually listening, then, if his style is all questions, mine is all answers.
If it gets to the point that he’s obsessive, or repetitive, or shows indications of not really listening, then I’ll disengage.
(And, from the other thread about conversation monopolizers, that sometimes is difficult!)
I have a 7 year old nephew that will do that to me every 5 minutes an d since hes grandmas special snowflake I have to answer …
But what makes it rough is even if its not a question hell repeat it until you respond with yes or sure because his parents barley acknowledge him if there “busy” and I don’t respond to every comment everyone says to me when I’m doing something …
I think it depends how much it is like the example in the OP.
In the OP, the person is being rude and insisting on being given more information than the questionee originally wants to give out. I agree with monstro that you don’t need to be polite to someone who is not being polite to you.
(How exactly I respond depends on if it’s just a guy with very poor social skills in general, or if I start to feel it’s a guy trying to “alpha male” me)
But the “never ending questions” thing is not quite like this many times.
For example, in a work environment, I often encounter people who don’t want to take responsibility for anything. So they ask a million questions about how to do some very easy task, and if I indulge them and answer everything, they then complain the task is too complex (because of how long we’ve been talking about it).
It’s times like that that I utilize the “Can I have a quick word?” and talk to them one-on-one in private. You can tell them very directly to pull their finger out their arse and get on with it, without the theatrics of doing this in public.