It happened again today. I held a meeting with the people in my group, including the manager. Something has been bugging me about a couple of people lately, one of them being the manager.
They finish other people’s sentences. It’s an obvious attempt to look smart or well informed, but it just comes across as being smarmy and completely unnecessary. I mean we all knew what the final two words were going to be; you didn’t have to blurt them out while nodding your head. And you don’t need to say “exactly!” immediately afterwards.
My God that’s aggravating to have to listen to for an hour and a half.
I gotta get out of this place. (♫ If it’s the last thing I ever do. ♬)
Anyone else notice and dislike this? And if you do it yourself, cut it out!
Yes, these people are annoying, but ya’ know who’s more annoying? People who try finish other people’s sentences only except they never get it fucking right!
That’s what I have to deal with.
I feel your pain Leaffan…
I have a very nice coworker who I like a lot who does that. She always tries to say the last word in your sentence with you. Why? I have no idea.
I think I trained her out of it by every time she would finish my sentence I’d do a very pregnant pause before I started again. Not long enough to be rude, just long enough so it seemed like I thought she was going to keep talking, and it was a little awkward. I was in a meeting with her and some other folks recently and she was doing it to others and I was like “Hey, I forgot she did that.”
I do this sometimes. I try to watch it. I will re-double my efforts.
In my home life my MIL trained me. She starts a sentence and
That. Just stops in the middle. Makes us all f-ing nuts. Sometimes we fill in humorous completions ("and then the martians invaded’, “and then I stopped wearing pants”) but normally we just complete her sentence, if we can, and move on.
At work, if I do it, it’s usually the same thing that triggers it. A long pause. I don’t have all day. I really don’t. We’ve had layoffs every six weeks for 2 years now. Under-staffed doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m so far under-water I can’t see the surface. If you don’t finish your sentence, I will try and help you out by finishing your thought for you. Well, I’m trying not to do that, but sometimes it’s either do that or lunge across the table. (Yes, I’m kidding about the lunge. No, I’m not stressed. why do you ask?)
Sometimes I do it with someone who won’t shut up or let me get a word in. It’s kind of an last ditch way of forcing yourself into verbal traffic. You just match the last couple words, slip an interjection immediately after while they take a pause, no matter how miniscule, then go right into what you wanted to say, and you have stolen the conversational baton.
I know people who do this habitually, and I agree it’s horrible. But I’ve also known people who do this for people who seem to pause and have trouble thinking of the word they want. My sister does it to me, and I’ve never thought it was rude. And I do it with my mom when she’s clearly struggling.
It doesn’t really happen to my sister, because if she forgets the word she wants (which happens to everyone), a synonym immediately pops into her head. It really helped her when going to Mexico, as she was always able to come up with another way to say something if she didn’t know the right Spanish word.
Guilty. Also trying to break the habit. I think I started it decades ago when a friend of mine wolud have trouble remembering the word he was trying for.
Now it’s just kind of a conditioned reflex when someone gets to the last word and pauses.
I’ve thought about this a lot in the past, and I think it is at the heart of the (a) social stereotyping of “New York” rude, fast, interruptive conversations vs “Middle America” slow ponderous and often “dumb.”
Like many NYC social twitches, I think it stems from Jewish culture; Woody Allen satirizes table talk here (short vid from Annie Hall).
Finishing the other person’s last words is the most annoying, but it is the micro effect (can’t think of how to phrase it) of interrupting between sentences, not to be rude, or to contradict–many people unused to it think that not waiting for the complete reasoning, or backgrounding to a thought is only for error–but because of enthusiasm and understanding what you’re going to say, which is a sign of respect, believe it or not, to that most important aspect of the conversation (to some), what is being said, not how it is being said.
Unless that person is truly an asshole, he does not mean “to cut you off.” And he expects you to be on your toes to be able to continue your ideas with that little check point of enthusiasm and comprehension, or riposte briefly and continue, because if the interrupt was wrong everyone knows what the topic is, or that very interrupt has helped focus it, and on you go. Yes, words as weapons, in metaphor.
That’s NYC often, where they speak so damn fast and rude. Taking the time for full stops and intellectual consideration and more outwardly respectful first me then you is just that. More outwardly respectful, with usually equal intellectual outcome, but, well, slower. Just different.
And it truly requires a certain psychological balance, like for regular people in all conversation. Unlike, say, my Jewish NYC brother, who cannot tolerate any interruptions in “conversations,” because he is tremendously arrogant (and at heart insecure) whether about the most mundane to hi-falutin’ stuff he knows well. Thus, he monologues, and I avoid speaking with him.
It’s common to all Mediterranean cultures, actually and among others. But like all things it should be done in moderation, and the ones who try to do it and get it wrong, those are like the dudes who only open the door to a woman they’re courting (there’s at least a 50:50 chance they’ll cut in front of said woman): instead of helping things move along, they stop them dead.
We had a student in one of our lectures who would sit at the front and ask the obvious next question as the lecturer developed a line of thought. (sorry, no examples, it was a long time ago).
It perhaps wasn’t rude to the lecturer, but it was rude to the 150 other students in the room. In a conversation, it might have indicated that he was on the same wavelength, that he was engaged. In a meeting… it indicates that you’re sucking up and shitting down.
Upon reflection, smarmy isn’t the right word really; there is no right word.
What it says to me is “I want everyone else in this room to know that I understand what you’re talking about because I am insecure and want to make it apparent to a room full of people that I have knowledge in this subject, otherwise I have nothing else to contribute to the meeting and don’t want to remain silent else I be considered unknowledgeable and therefore expendable.”
