I was gonna say...

I was going to start this blog by asking if you've ever paid attention to how someone speaks, more so than the words that come out of his/her mouth. I then decided that that is far too complicated and broad of an idea to use for my post, and, further, I never did well in philosophy, so I couldn’t really extend the metaphor past the first sentence.

Let me try this again:

Have you ever noticed a peculiarity of speech that becomes more and more irritating the longer a conversation lasts? Filler words like “uh” and “um” are the best immediate example. I know at least two people who use 'um' and 'uh' so often that it detracts from whatever message they're trying to get out of their mouth. I was so distracted during a specific conversation with one of the shall-remain-unnamed individuals that I counted the number of times she used 'um' or 'uh' during a two-and-a-half minute monologue.

<dramatic pause to give you time to guess>

...32?!? You are right! Ding ding ding! Thirty-two times in two-and-a-half minutes. And she's not a fast talker. It was ridiculous, and I wanted to smack her because she was completely unaware of it.

Moving along: I'm on the phone for my job. A lot. Highly unfortunate given my tendency to dislike communication with other humans, but it's better than in-person conversation. Anyway, there are plenty of times when someone says something over and over throughout the conversation that gets on my nerves. Dumping “like” in the middle of, like, every other sentence is obnoxious. I'm not sure the point, but it's, like, so unnecessary. “I think” is another. You ask a question, and someone answers with, “I think...blah blah blah,” or ends their answer with “...I think.”

For the record, I don't need verbal verification you thought about your answer before giving it to me.

I recently spoke to a lady who gave me much food for thought as it relates to the above discussion. Less so her qualifications for a particular position.

Let me give you a brief rundown of part of our discussion:

Me: Give me a brief rundown of your overall experience.

Candidate: I was gonna say I have a lot of customer service experience, cooking, prep-cook, banquet-style serving, knife skills, cleaning, yeah.

Me: How do you handle stress on the job? If things are starting to maybe go off the rails a bit, how do you re-center yourself to remain focused on the work so you don't get overwhelmed?

Candidate: I was gonna say that I usually take a step back, take a few deep breaths in and out, and then jump back in.

…

You get the picture. Every open-ended question was answered with an “I was gonna say...” Just...why? You did say what you were gonna say...didn’t you? Or, if you had something else to say, why did you not include that as well? That would've made more sense.

Example: “I was gonna tell you to kick rocks...but then I decided to be a bit more professional and tell you that your work history isn't quite what our clients are requesting at this time.'”