Communication breakdown

Hi Everyone,

This post is in response to Beck's blog which made me think of all the times I have seen this type of situation occur, and shamefully enough somewhere along the line I have probably fallen prey to the same problem. I replied to Beck's post with my own story.... I work for the ACT Government in Payroll and on this occasion I had to discuss someone’s leave/pay with them. However, in this instance I don't think cultural differences were present, probably just arrogance. After I stated why I was deducting money from him he started to challenge me and so I repeated myself again, and again. Eventually both our tempers were getting frayed and he said quite rudely "I know that because you have said it seven times now" (each time I was trying to adapt my words into a new sentence to see if it would assist his understanding of leave entitlements). However he kept asking the same question! Eventually I said "I will get someone else for you because obviously I can't explain it clearly enough for you." As rude as this sounded I meant it as nicely as possible as obviously we were having a communication problem and the conversation was straining us both. This really illustrates to me that communication problems are everywhere within our daily lives... and often ignorance (especially in believing that raising one's voice will help) dominants within society.

Thinking about this made many other situations come to mind. My question is do things like this often occur and yet we have become so blind that we just don't see it anymore, or are we trying not to see it?

Thanks,
Zoë.