When I lived in Okinawa many years ago, my boss’s wife, who was German, brought a cake to the office to celebrate her husband’s birthday. To this day, when I’m baking, I recall a remark she made to me when I asked about her cake recipe: “You Americans can’t bake because you don’t measure your eggs. Your recipes call for 3 eggs. Large eggs? Small eggs? We measure our eggs! A half cup of eggs. That’s the secret. Measure everything precisely.”
Yet imprecision persists in my kitchen. That is, on the rare occasions when I cook.
My pet peeve is imprecise language.
People often say something other than what they mean—for no good reason. They are not attempting to be politically correct. They are not wishing to avoid offending someone. They are not side-stepping accountability. They are just imprecise.
These same people ask questions and then do not listen to the answers they receive, but rather go on their merry way as if people hadn’t given them a precise answer.
I recently flew out to LA for a TV interview. After the interview, the producer asked the show’s host and three panelists to stay seated on the set for the next taping without a wardrobe change because they were running behind schedule. They resisted, promising to change clothes in 2 minutes or less. He granted 2 minutes. Ten minutes later, the host and panelists had not yet returned from wardrobe, and the producer still had me on the set doing cut-aways.
We wrapped up the interview at 12:45, so I dialed the limo service to say I had finished early and asked if the driver could pick me up for the airport earlier than the sheduled 1:30 pick-up.
“Hold on, and I’ll check,” the agent said, and she got on the other line to call the driver. Shortly, the agent came back on the line, “He says he can be there in 15 minutes.”
I thanked her, hung up the phone, and walked across the room to select a nice pasta salad for lunch. My cell phone rang. It was the limo driver, saying he was outside waiting to take me to the airport. So much for “15 minutes.” I dropped the pasta salad in the trash after my first bite.
Got the airport and went straight to the gate for the next flight to DFW, asking to be put on the standby list as a Lifetime Platinum. “No way are you going to get on this flight. It’s way overbooked and the list is already extremely long.”
“Would you please add my name? I’m a Lifetime Platinum. Maybe that’ll help.”
“I’ll add it. It won’t help. You won’t get on.”
Two minutes later, the agent called my name with a confirmed seat. In fact, as far as I could tell, all standby passengers got on the flight.
Back home, I checked my email and found a contract that needed a response. I left this voice mail for my assistant: “Would you email Bryan for me and tell him I’m out of the office on vacation for a couple of days and that I’ll review the contract when I return to the office and then get back to him.” Her email to Bryan: “Dianna is out of the office today, but she’ll be back to you on the contract in short order.” I hope his definition of “short order” was not that day or the next because I intended to convey just the opposite—that it would be several days because I wanted to do some investigating before I responded.
All these examples are not meant to say there’s no place for generalities and vagueness. There is. Consider responses to these: Age? Weight? Paycheck?
But precision pays when clarity counts.
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Posted at 3:41pm in
Communication—Interpersonal, General Communication |
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