A real-life game of Telephone

[athenaltena]

You know that kid’s game Telephone where a message gets progressively more mangled as it passes from person to person? That just happened in real life to me.

On Friday I was tasked with calling one of our developers to ask them for the Recording Information for an agreement, but since the secretary I was talking to sounded very very sleepy she heard it as Reporting Information, and I just got a call from another, more awake secretary looking at her colleague’s notes with no idea what that meant. I didn’t remember what I specifically asked for on Friday, so I had no idea either, and it took going back to my boss to sort it all out.

To be fair, Recording and Reporting do sound similar, and for all I know I accidentally said Reporting on the phone since I wasn't too with it myself at 4:30 on a Friday. The distortion over the phone and the little bit of Bostonian accent I’ve been picking up (which tends to squish the consonants and vowels in a word to hell and back) probably didn’t help. We got it all sorted out, but it was kinda funny.

Comments

[comingin2day.livejournal.com]

I hear things like that all the time. I have to ask for clarification with the family all the time, because they will look at me strangely when I start to laugh. Of course, if what they say sounds so similar, we will all take a vote in the room to see if others heard the same thing. It is interesting to know that perception of what a person thinks, versus what they say are not always heard, but thought. And, that when i am speaking very clearly my thoughts and words together, I am accused of yelling, when I can assure you my tone is quite low. I think it is all about focus and projecting, versus sleepy daydreaming.. smiling.

Hope your day goes well..