I work with a crew member whom I adore, and who also sometimes drives me nuts, and at one point had me considering looking for a new job. But I decided to make it work, figured out her hot buttons, and learned how to accommodate them. And practiced being less impatient. It helps that it's obvious that she cares and wants everyone to be happy, and is essentially a kind, generous soul.
Our communication styles are diametrically opposed. I'm direct, usually too much so; she is deferentially circuitous to the point of abstraction. An example of how our styles contrast:
Me: "Those shastas look like crap; I'll cut them back."
She: "I'm thinking that we could offer our assistance to those poor shastas over there, which look a wee bit forlorn, so do you think that you could perhaps give them some attention so that they don't look so yucky?"
While she's giving instructions like this, I'm practically doing a jitterbug of impatience. She also has to hunt for words a lot, so her instructions are loaded with "uhs" and "ums," making it all the more brutal. I've learned to just wait it out, breathing deliberately, because I get paid either way.
She also constantly forgets two key things about me:
1. I have no sense of direction. Unless the direction is for a location within a block of where I am, please just give me an address I can plug into my phone, or some really unique landmarks to guide my way. Even though I've been to a location a dozen times over the summer, I will not know how to get to it on my own. Do not tell me to go to Main street and take a right on 122 and then left on Wing, because I'm lost already. I've explained that it's like dyslexia, and just accept that I have a learning issue when it comes to directions.
"At any given point in our day," I explained to her, "I could not begin to tell you how I would drive home; I could not even tell you in what direction I'd head. I cannot visualize how the streets relate to one another. My brain forms no mental map as I travel."
After about three of these explanations, she still insists on giving me directions, so I treat it like her learning disability that she can't understand my disability, so, resisting the urge to Lindy Hop, I listen to her directions and say, "Great, thanks! And the address?"
2. I'm having some serious bladder issues related to other conditions. I have no problem using the outdoor executive washroom, so I usually just give a heads up that I'm heading into the woods/behind a huge rhododendron/storage shed. I've become adept at sight lines and stealth squatting.
No matter how many times I've explained that when the urge hits, I have to answer it pretty quickly, she stops and delays me by offering stammering suggestions on the nearest coffee shops that I could use instead, or, when the location does require me to drive to a coffee shop, starts giving me directions (!!!) rather than let me use my phone. One day our conversation went like this:
Me: "I'm heading to Dunks to use the restroom--"
She: "Oh! If you want, um, um, there's a coffee shop close by, um, about oh, two miles or so. There's one down by the um - the um --Panera on Route 3, you know that one? You um --go down the street--"
Me: "I've just peed myself."
She: "Oh! Oh, well I'll let you go."
Me: "Thanks; be right back."
Then there are the house descriptions. She avoids the most obvious clues, using streets once again fortheloveofGodMontresor.
She: "The big house at the end of the street."
Me: "Gonna need more."
She: "They have the two containers."
Me: "Still nothing."
She: "They have the little front porch with the tiny boxes."
Me: "You mean the house with the two German Shepherds?"
She: "Yes, that's the one."
Another time:
She: "The house on Main Street."
Me: "Not getting a visual."
She: You cut back all the amsonia."
Me:"You mean the Dead Rabbit house?"
She: "That's the one."
For me, two big dogs who run up and slobber all over you, or discovering two dead (likely poisoned) rabbits in the bed you were weeding would be the lead. Not "The brown house on the corner."
I also have a much fouler mouth, and I hate maintaining day lilies. So the one day when I looked over to see her yell, "FUCKING DAY LILIES!!" I knew we'd finally come to a meeting of the minds.
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