What Really Pisses Me Off

Note: the following article was originally written, for a personal blog I used to run, on 24 September 2009, and it has been brought up-to-date and edited for this site. And while I know I have touched on this subject elsewhere on this site, this rant goes into more detail.

All of us, I suspect, have things that, at best, irritate us, and at worst make us practically explode with anger.

And I’m no different to most – especially during the last ten years of my first marriage when life was a living hell. With hindsight, I’m not really sure how I retained any shred of sanity at all (and there are undoubtedly those, probably including my ex-wife, who thought I didn’t).

Anyway, I digress (just for a change).

Out of all the things that get up my nose, the one thing that I really hate above all else (and I use the word “hate” advisedly, as I feel it’s one of many words that has been diluted over time because of sensationalism and a desire to exaggerate constantly, but it’s definitely apt here) is when people interrupt me (or others, for that matter).

To me, it’s a sign that the person who interrupts you assumes that what they have to say is more important than what you were saying – and maybe it is, but they can’t know that until they hear you out, of course.

It also seems reasonable to conclude that it’s a power and control thing, and there is no shortage of people who appear to have inferiority complexes that drive them to behave like this in a vain attempt to make themselves feel more important than they are.

It’s arrogance at its worst, it’s rude (I was certainly brought up not to interrupt others if they were speaking), and for me, it’s one of the easiest ways to get me to clam up that there is – I’ve generally got better things to do than waste my time and energy trying to say something, only to be overruled by some arsehole who doesn’t care about anybody else’s thoughts and opinions (or feelings).

The effects of this sort of treatment are somewhat insidious – over time, it can destroy whatever self-confidence you might have, and if I hadn’t had a bit of an epiphany (actually, can you have a bit of one, or is it an all or nothing thing?), not to mention a lot of help from professionals and a good friend or two, I might never have snapped out of that feeling.

Is this the sort of thing that can cause a person to be shy and introverted, or is it something that is amplified if you already are shy and/or introverted?

Are there any other motives behind this behaviour apart from control and power, or is that pretty much about it?

Is it primarily a male or female thing, a cultural thing, or is it more to do with how you’re brought up in your formative years?

Is there any way to educate people who interrupt so that they eliminate this behaviour, or is it the usual case of people will only change if they really want to themselves?

Lots of questions, but maybe for most people, the real question is, what’s the most effective way to deal with it when it happens to you?

You can do what I used to do all of the time, and simply shut up, waiting for a frequently elusive opportunity to complete what you were trying to say. This is largely useless, as conversations move on and to bring it up later on would be inappropriate or irrelevant in most situations. The other problem is that you may, of course, completely forget what you were going to say.

You can take a different tack and continue by trying to talk louder than the intruder, but that feels really uncomfortable (to me, at least), and in my opinion, it’s a somewhat aggressive reaction that could lead to a shouting match, or worse.

You could, when or if you get the chance, politely point out to the person concerned what they’ve just done and how it made you feel, but I suspect that the type of person who habitually interrupts (and in my experience, people either do this all the time, or not at all) probably isn’t going to take any notice of how their behaviour affects you.

You could get up and walk away, which is a bit extreme, but I did work with somebody once who did that very thing in a meeting because he felt that nobody was listening to what he had to say and he had other work to do. This may not always be practical, but I’ve often considered it – I just never had the courage to do it.

A related tactic, if you’re on the phone, would be to hang up, although without the visual cues of a face-to-face conversation, you have to accept that it’s harder, over the phone, to know when the other person has finished their thought, so there’s always a possibility that the interruption was accidental rather than deliberate.

I should add that I do get this happens sometimes in a face-to-face situation because you think the other person has finished talking, when they haven’t. I too do this occasionally (partly because I’m not very good at reading people), and when that happens, I stop talking immediately to let the other person continue.

Or you could settle things once and for all by stapling their lips together!

Hah!

I really should curb these flights of fantasy, but when you’ve been interrupted as many times as I have, and felt as powerless as I have, then vengeful thoughts get wilder and wilder.

So, back to reality, if I must.

As you can probably tell, being interrupted is a big issue for me, but it does actually get worse, if you can believe that.

How, you may ask?

Well, what I dislike even more than just being cut off is when somebody interrupts, assumes they know what you were going to say (or tries to finish off your sentence for you), and then goes on to make some point or argument based purely on what they thought you were going to say.

My first wife was a bugger for this, and yet the irony is that, even after 20+ years of marriage (I know, I was obviously a sucker for punishment as I should have seen the warning signs and got out a lot sooner than I did), not once did she ever get it right.

Yes, that’s right – she never, ever managed to complete my thought accurately.

So much for couples who stay together for a long time (and I would call 20+ years a long time – as the joke goes, you don’t get that long for murder!) getting closer and being able to finish each other’s sentences off.

Well, I think I’ve made my thoughts clear, and the good news is that this is my site and I’ve not been interrupted once!

I’ll leave this subject (for now) with a quote from an English philosopher from the seventeenth century:

Well said, Mr Locke!

But seriously, please try not to interrupt others when they’re talking – unless, of course, there is a genuine emergency that cannot wait.