Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Finding the Lost and Found

Today I went to the lost and found, which is located in our campus bookstore. As the clerk was taking me back to the lost and found area, she asked me, “did you find everything you needed okay?” After a little awkward silence I told her that I hoped I would. Finally the light bulb switched on. “Oops, wrong question,” she said. I told her it was fine. Because I do the same thing at my job.

Would you like whipped cream? is the standard question at the campus coffee shop where I work. They buy a latte, I ask. They purchase a gift card, I ask. They file a complaint, I ask. Then after I ask them, I repeat the process twice because I wasn’t listening the first time.

Mechanical responses are common and even sometimes expected on the job, but they happen in real life, too. For instance, how many of us really want to know how someone is doing when we ask? And we say thank you all the time, but are we grateful, really?

Let people know that you mean what you say. Flippant comments and questions steal integrity from communication. 

2 comments:

  1. I completely agree. So many times we ask each other "How are you doing?" without really caring about the answer. Then again, some people do care when they ask but are responded by a flippant "good" as the person rushes by. It takes cooperation to create a meaningful society.

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  2. This happens so much on campus. It's really hard to know how to answer sometimes! Especially when in reality the honest answer to "how are you" is "I feel like garbage." It's sad though, because everyone knows deep down that all these mechanical exchanges are...mechanical, and it doesn't really make a difference to the person if it takes place or not, because it's so meaningless.

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