Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Saying What You Mean (for better or worse)

I had one of those moments at work today that probably shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened for a LOT of reasons, honestly, but here's the full story, at least as I experienced it.

I was in a meeting. It's a bi-weekly meeting where people who have issues which the IT department should know about - but which might be too hard to put into an email - meet up to talk them through.

I was trying to explain a particular situation which, I think, has probably been causing some problems, lately. (We have a drop-down box at one point which only offers two possible answers. But since clients could actually have other answers, it has a line which says "If your file isn't X, then choose option Y." The trouble is that many people have actually had file Z, Q, P, and L - and so when they get further into the system those can cause issues.)

So, I was trying to explain this issue, and one of the other people in the meeting kept asking me questions like "How many people do we really deal with with that?" and "Well, we can fix that for them anyway, can't we?" She interjected multiple times, and eventually - as my brain was getting overwhelmed with trying to keep my question out - I looked over at her, put my hand on the table, and said "Calm the fuck down" then I went right back to finish what I was saying.

Yep. I said fuck at work. I did say it with a smile on my face and my tone of voice must have been cheerful because a few other people did laugh. And, well, the young woman who had been talking over me the whole time finally stopped.

The end product, then, was what I had hoped for.

But I probably should have just said "Calm down" - though I don't know if it would have done as much good.

Definitely a case of saying what you mean (and meaning what you say) possibly needing a bit of a thought-pause somewhere in the middle.

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