Why Can't the English - Part I.

Why Can’t the English…. ??? – Part I.

Every year communication gets worse.  There is a plethora of words, and yet communication is more scant.  People, if listening at all, are mostly half-listening.  They are simultaneously listening to music in their ear buds, a television blaring in the background, or looking at their cell phone’s screen scrolling absent-mindedly with one finger.  I fully anticipate in the future that we will no longer be able to utilize the index finger for police fingerprints because the unique ridges will be worn off by scrolling on the cell phone and ipad screens.

Even when they really are listening, they aren’t hearing or comprehending.  For that problem, I can make no polite diagnosis.  Here’s the case in point:

My friend and I were haunting the Mall last week to get some hair-related procedures done in the absence of our good friend and hairdresser who is vacationing in China.  This is probably one of the biggest Malls in America; I’m just saying.  We went to no less than FIVE different shops before we found someone who could see us.  This was a “girls’ afternoon out” so, obviously, we wanted to be worked on simultaneously so we could visit and not die of boredom getting our hair done.  The first place we went was booked solid.  The second place we went had only one girl working.  She told us that she was booked for the rest of the afternoon & evening, but the next day had time for walk-in’s.  Really?  And if we walk in seconds after someone else walks in first, then you won’t have time for US as walk-in’s.  (Mensa Conclusion: This is the risk you take when you don’t make appointments in advance:  she loses business that she can’t fit in; meanwhile, I am walking around with roots advertising that I am no longer 28 years old!) 

The third place we went to was a “beauty products” store with a sandwich board in front that listed the prices of their salon services.  I walked up to the girl at the counter who appeared to be dressed for a funeral.  I apologize.  I get distracted with our current fads and styles – back in my day, only farm animals had piercings in their noses.  Blame it on my lack of multi-cultural upbringing, or whatever, but it aint my bag.  I was, nonetheless very polite in my request:  “Hi.  I need a color; and my friend needs a permanent.”  She looks at me with “????” going across her face.  I repeat myself.  She starts to walk away from the cash register, pointing to the products, and is talking to me but not looking at me (and that is ALWAYS bad customer service manners.) “We have boxed color over …” and I feel my midlife angst surge, I make the Time-Out gesture with my hands, and call out:  “Stop.  Right there.  You don’t understand me.  I am asking about your SALON SERVICES.”  Then my friend says over my shoulder, “I need a perm.”  Somehow the word “permanent” did not seem to be the logical rootword of the shorthand “perm,” which is why she wasn’t getting it?  The clerk said very nonchalantly, “oh, yeah, we don’t have anyone working back there now.”  End of vignette.  I walk out raising my eyebrows and shaking my head.  No apology.  No attempt to re-schedule us so they would have future business.  No nothing.  Argh.  The fourth shop was a repeat experience of example #2.

The fifth place was like how many xx’s does it take to screw in a light bulb.  It took three people looking at the appointment book to see if/when they could fit us in.  Then they decided, rather apologetically, “Well, we could take you in 15 minutes.”  They were apologizing for minutes?  Hey, no problem – I feel like I spent hours walking around the mall already.  Then the fun begins.  I step outside to wait in the lobby that has massage chairs.  What the heck, why not?  I will tell you why not:  the inflatable compression on both sides of the calves of my legs scared me more than the automatic blood pressure cuff in the drugstore does.  It KEPT INFLATING.  I yanked my legs out before they were exploded.  The electronic pummeling on my back was so intense, I think I lost weight on the front of my body.  Not to mention it rattled my whole body so bad, it must have been obscene for onlookers to behold.  One minute into this torture, my stylist looks out and calls me inside.  I turn to my friend:  “Take the chair.  It’s got a minute left on it.”  The stylist says, “Oh, we would have waited for you.”  No problem –trust me – I think I am done with those chairs for quite a while.   Two stylists ended up working on my friend and I simultaneously, the pop music bopping in the background.  A Latino man in his late 30’s comes in pushing his mother’s wheelchair.   She transfers to the stylist’s work chair, and he transfers to a nearby chair to wait and scroll the cell phone.  And then it happens:  “Despacito” comes on the radio.  I comment out loud, “Ah, Despacito, it’s been #1 on the pop charts for eleven weeks, easily the new Macarena.  But the lyrics in both are kind of racy.”  And then the Mother and Son began singing:  “Poquito, poquito …. Despacito.”  You think I make this stuff up.  I don’t.  I just smiled to myself and let my Magician keep making the aging-look disappear from my hair.  She did a nice job.  I tipped her fairly.  It ended well…. But it was too much of a communication Odyssey getting there.

Hey, I just want people to LISTEN to each other.  We will get much more accomplished if we pause to absorb the entire picture as someone speaks:  the verbal and the nonverbal both matter in the presentation of data.  This isn’t merely a customer service issue.  This is a whole world issue.  Read on… to the next blog entry…