SBI. If I flag SBI, then the conversation
that follows is a Strictly Business Interaction. Just fill the prescription. I
don’t want to know about your kids, I have no interest in village gossip and
the weather is a matter of sublime indifference to me. We are not, in this
case, interacting as two human beings; I have a business need that I think you
can fill. End of story.
WIA. Well Intentioned Advice. Children can
be given advice on such matters as unsuitable friends, inappropriate clothing
choices or bad financial decisions, why can’t adults? I am more than happy to
receive such advice if offered in a spirit of honesty and generosity and, if I give
it under the banner of WIA, it comes in the same spirit. Adulthood does not
guarantee omniscience and there are far too many people sitting around,
cringing at the disaster someone, who is supposedly a friend, is walking into,
and doing nothing about it. WIA them. You are welcome to do the same to me.
Offence not intended and none is permitted to be taken.
JDC. Simply I Just Don’t Care. If you a
raise a topic with me that is of passionate interest to you and I have listened
for more than three minutes, I have the right to call JDC. You have the same
right with me. It’s a direct way of saying “You can talk about this for the
next hour and I won’t be any more interested than I am now.” It doesn’t mean I
don’t like you as a person or that your interests are not important, it’s just
that they mean nothing to me and we would have a mutually more fulfilling
interaction if we moved on to another topic of conversation.
NTA. I Need Time Alone and lots of it. That
doesn’t make me a sociopath it makes me an introvert. Sometimes I don’t feel
like talking to people, particularly people I don’t know well because that’s a
lot of hard work. Other times, even people I know well are liable to be
eviscerated if they want to talk to me. I neither need nor want to interact all
the time. The purpose of this protocol is to, without offence, allow people to
decline social invitations or leave parties early because they have just had
enough of other people.
OHD. In some interactions involving
technical matters, One of us Has a Degree. If you continue to offer your
inexpert opinion on something I have studied for some years, you are going to
make a fool of yourself. You are also going to try my patience to the point of
meltdown. You do have a right to an opinion but that’s not to say that your
opinion is right. If one of us has expertise and the other doesn’t, I think we
can call OHD and move on to the next thing, can’t we?
IGA. Is this Going Anywhere? I know we are
fellow human beings, we share many of the same joys and sorrows in life as
countless billions have done before us and doubtless many will into the future.
Children, work, money, spouses, health etc. I don’t need half an hour of small
talk to re-establish our mutual humanness. After a couple of minutes, I’m going
to call IGA by which I mean, “Are we going to get to a deeper level in this
conversation or start to have an informed debate?” If the answer is “no” then I
want to move on to the next interlocutor; there’s nothing for me here.
TOV. If I have been forced to listen to an
idiot talking for too long then I will get up and leave. Why? Because it’s That
Or Violence. Chickens that cluck and cluck and never actually lay anything tend
to get their heads chopped off. If you witter away, never saying anything,
never challenging my opinions, never providing inspiration for my thoughts to
go off into unexplored territory, then I’m going to cut the conversation short
before I do something similar to you.
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