I know some people who cannot, or could not, communicate an important piece of information without first giving a long, winding introduction or pre-background talk about things (which can take long minutes) before finally getting to the main point. In one instance, a woman would take 10+ minutes before she would get to what she actually wanted to say.
What would be a polite way of hurrying up such conversation - i,.e,. “What is your point?” (Problem is, one such coworker said that she was very wounded when her father would do exactly that - try to hurry her up as a child that way - when he would ask her, “What’s your point?” when she would begin her talk with long, winding introductions-of-the-situation.)
In my opinion, we can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to ask them to stop telling stories that don’t go anywhere - like about the time they caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I remember someone once telling me a story about how they needed a new heel for their shoe, so, they decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So they tied an onion to their belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, they’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was they were telling me a story about having an onion on their belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
“So how can I help you?” is a good question to have on deck at all times. If they start going off on a tangent, steer them back with, “And how is this related to [answer to the first question]?”
And remember to be nice; the tone you’re looking for is “inquisitive” and not “annoyance.”
I know for a fact that poking their foreheads with your index finger while saying “skip intro” doesn’t work…
I once tried waiting until the speaker took a breath and told her to “Make it march!” but that confused her so badly I was still apologizing days later.
“Can we get to the point?” helps sometimes.
Mostly, I just wait for them to finish, then ask a completely unrelated question.
I find a direct “I don’t need the story, just tell me what you need me to know”.
Back when I used to do the scheule at work, the paper you’d fill out to request days off had a big, bold, underlined statement at the top that read “NO STORIES, JUST LIST THE DATES YOU CAN’T WORK”. I don’t need three paragraphs so you can tell me you can’t work next Monday and Wednesday.
Similarly, when I see cops (on Live PD) trying to figure out what they need to know at a domestic incident, as soon as they start getting stories that go back weeks or months they’ll cut the person off and say “Tonight, why are we here right now, why did we get called in”. That usually changes the original train of thought of ‘well last week I said he could borrow my radio, but then he gave it to his girlfriend…’ to a more concise ‘He pushed me through a window’. The cop can ask follow up questions, but they’re often more interested in the crime, who did it and who’s the victim.
I have a friend who creates 5 or 10 paragraph posts to make a 3 sentence statement. When we point it out to him he insists that he could not properly make his point is 3 sentences. No matter how often we tell him it does no good. Nobody reads or responds to his posts because they are just too long.
When someone figures it out let me know, I think my new direct manager is one of those. He appears to need 30’ to say “hello” (at least 10’ spent saying “gee, I’m sure taking a long time to say this”) and 15’ for “goodbye, talk to you tomorrow”.
My wife has - or had - a friend, who I’ll call Susan, whose inability to bring a narrative to a point was, and I use this word deliberately, pathological. She simply could not do not; she had no ability, at all, to relate a story of any sort in a way that worked for the listener.
It actually got so bad my wife had to tell her straight up that it was difficult to talk to her. She was upset, and said she’d try not to do that, and has made no progress at all. It’s like some kind of learning disability.
I appreciate those of you who have attempted to give serious responses, because I know people who do this, including sometimes my SO, and I want to shout “Get to the point!” or “Don’t bury the lede!” but, you know, without hurting their feelings or being mean about it.
Sometimes I actually will break in and say “What is your point?” or repeat/clarify the question I originally asked that set off the whole long, tangential response. It may sometimes be partly my fault for not being more clear in the first place about whether I was asking for specific information or asking an open-ended question to give the other person an opportunity to tell me about her day (and if the latter, whether I was looking for the long or the short version).
