Why can't some people learn to explain things better?

My dad is definitely an over-explainer. I’ll ask him a question, and off he’ll go. About twenty minutes later I’ll be sitting there thinking “Dad, you answered my question to my satisfaction FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO. STOP TALKING ALREADY.”

Just recently he told us that he wants to become a high school math tutor after he retires. I cringed a little, but said nothing. God help those high school students. :smiley:

When my mother does that, I tell her “sorry, but you’ll have to file a complaint with the factory I came from: I can’t hear your nape speaking.”

Many people, as njtt said, are bad at reading their audience. Others are so busy trying to look good that they roam and stray and tell you about anything but the point at hand.

Right now I’m in a new job. The guy I replace left with his pants on fire and had done his best to completely ignore the customer’s needs; the one doing the “information handover” doesn’t give a shit about the information he’s got to give to me and is unable to say “I don’t know”, much less “it isn’t my field, so I wasn’t really paying attention to those parts”, so he keeps telling me about the cars people had in each factory they visited, the clothes people wore, how dirty the factories were (he’d never seen a factory before, I’d like to take him to a coal mine just for kicks)… anything except what I need. But the thing is, I don’t believe he has what I need!

Me: Mom, it’s the third time you’re explaining that in half an hour. I realize we’re on computer-to-computer skype, but are you sure there isn’t something else you’d rather tell me about? Something I haven’t heard twice before just now?
Mom: I’m not telling you because I want you to know about it, I’m telling you because I need to tell someone
Me: Oh, OK, say my name when you’re done, then.

We’ve established it as an SOP. When she tells me about something that’s not life-threatening, I go into “ahum and ahem mode” (I can ahum and ahem at the right spots without really listening to a word being said) until she says my name to signal a change of subject.

Think how much easier this conversation would have been if you had simply said: “I couldn’t hear the end because you turned your head away.” :smiley: