Put a medium sized whiteboard and a dry erase marker outside your cubicle. Everytime someone interrupts you, tell them calmly and firmly to write their name and question on the whiteboard and you’ll get back to them asap. Do NOT just hurry up and answer their question as that conditions them to continue interrupting you.
Get in the habit of pointing to the whiteboard anytime someone interrupts. Co-workers are like animals. They have to be trained.
Secondly, there’s no reason why you should be the only expert on a sub-group. What happens when you take a vacation?
If there’s any repetition to their questions, it would makes sense to create a list of FAQs and hang them outside your cubicle.
This is what jumped out at me in the OP. Part of the problem here seems to be it’s your job to uncork this information. Trying to attend to all of your other tasks without taking this into account is bound to be frustrating. Many of the “be proactive” suggestions above about educating your colleagues in both the content area and the protocol for making enquiries are called for.
For the truly rude interrupters, I favor **Larry Mudd’s ** approach. I teach high school math and have found that the most effective way to cure self-centered communicators is to make sure they get a good dose of what they’re dishing out. When one of them starts asking a question, loudly and pointedly start talking in the middle of their sentence. I find I only need to do it once or twice, with an occasional refresher for the severely dense, to resolve the problem.
The answer apparently was: Keep your vacations short (no more than a week at a time), scheduled well in advance, let us know where you’re going, (and in pre-cell phone days) Give us the number of the hotel where you’ll be staying (on another continent) in case we need to call you.
I deliberately stayed at a different hotel.
“Oh sorry, they lost my reservation and they were full up, so I went down the street”.
“Why didn’t you call and tell us?”
“Because it was 3am your time and it would have cost me something like $5 a minute at hotel rates. Every time you wanted me to call you back. So I figured you could tough out a couple of days without me, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend that kind of money out of my own pocket answering questions that could either wait until I got back, or the person could have figured out on their own!”
“Well next time…”
“Next time you have someone else prepared to deal with it.”
Again, I have to say that you can beat your co-workers over the head with whatever methodology you think will work, but as long as their behavior is accepted by management, you’ll be fighting a losing battle. It is only when management decides to step in and make changes (either in the whole ‘expert’ department or in dealing with interuptions of meetings and calls) that real change is going to occur.
Because if you push your co-workers too far with what they consider rude responses to their legitimate work questions, then YOU BECOME THE PROBLEM.
Then it ceases to be about how often you’re being interrupted, and starts to be about your apparent attitude problem.
Make a politely worded little tent sign for your desk that reads;
"Please do not interrupt me, I am busy.
Kindly send me an email, or come back later.
Your cooperation is greatly appreciated."
Make sure it’s large enough printing to read from a distance of at least 6 - 10 ft. Then don’t look up when people come around, completely ignore them (unless it’s your boss, duh!). If they try to interrupt hold up the sign. I’d consider reorienting yourself so your back is to them, if at all possible.
If this fails to produce results, have the whole thing reprinted on a tent card the size of those wet floor signs you see floor cleaners use, place it in the doorway to your cubicle.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I’d like to try the farting and/or staring. It’s even more fun and unexpected coming from a woman, I think.
Regarding the one SME thing - I’ve actually provided some really thorough documentation on what I do, what I know, how to do my job, etc. because I had to go out of the country for a month earlier in the year. Most people just don’t want to bother to look it up. Also, I have the broadest working and strategic knowledge of all the products compared to anyone on our team, often more than the product owners themselves - it’s not because I’m supposed to, but because I tend to pick up on new legislation that passes or come up with big picture ideas and happen to also know who to go to in order to implement them; I also know our system limitations and capabilities.
There’s been a big emphasis on cross training lately, but everyone’s too busy to bother. I don’t really see it changing and I don’t actually plan to be outright rude, but I do plan to try working from home or at least away from my desk more frequently.
I appreciate the entertaining responses. Now I need to go find some beans.
