We’ve seen a lot of advice about office etiquette, productivity tips, and general best-practice suggestions, all concerning the intricacies of communication. Yes! Communication! The ability to say things in such a way that you get what you want from the people you’re bothering!

Frankly, we’re getting a little tired of it.

Communication might be a problem in business these days — lord knows, we’ve got hundreds of examples of emails that don’t make sense, or are so poorly written, we can’t even be sure that the person writing them was actually aiming for “sense” — but aren’t we going around this whole thing backwards? Maybe the problem is that people just don’t fucking listen.

“I’m Too Busy To Listen”
Middle management sucks, we know. You have underlings asking you to make decisions, upper-management dunning you for status reports, and nobody respects the work-life balance you always talk about, but never achieve. We sympathize, truly.

But, if someone comes up to talk to you, could you be a little less obvious about the fact that you’re not listening to them? For example: try not letting your eyes dart around as if you’re expecting to be ambushed by a gang of fountain-pen wielding accountants. More importantly, try to avoid repeating, “Yeah… yeah… yeah…” over and over while doing the pee-pee dance.

Keyworders
Another thing: We know when you’re just half-listening because you only seem to pick up on certain keywords, regardless of the context.

A: So, with tax season coming up, I thought it would be a good idea to get some 1040′s from the library and put them in the break room…

B: Taxes, talk to accounting, taxes, talk to accounting…

A: Also, I was going to order a meat lovers’ pizza for lunch, but I want them to withhold the ham.

B: Withholding, talk to accounting, withholding, talk to accounting.

Yeah, that’s helpful.

Skim Ilk
The email variation of the keyworder is, frankly, even worse. Because when someone takes the time and effort to construct an email so elegant, so communicative that it deserves a place in the office-work hall of fame, it kind of pisses them off to receive a vague, stock response based on only the first sentence of the message. Be especially careful when you respond by asking for more information, because if the stuff you’re asking for is already in the email you received, it’s just going to be confusing and embarrassing.

A Short Attention Span is Not a Business Skill
A lot of people think that they’re more skillful than they actually are. The folks that are most proud for the least reason are people who think that they are awesome at multi-tasking. Actually, no. What these people really are good at is losing focus.

Bobbling from one half-done task to another, doing badly at them all, and looking like a pill-ed-up speed-freak on the run from the government is no way to go through life, son. Especially because, thanks to the fact that you’ve come to think of yourself as the cheetah of the business world, you insist that any problem can be described, verbally, in twelve seconds; or in one short sentence, if you manage via email. Why should your co-workers be asked to make concessions to your self-induced attention deficit problems? It might be a useful exercise for the people you work with to have to explain complex business issues in such a simplified way that even a four year old could under stand it, but it shouldn’t be a day-to-day activity.

Wait. We know why. Because you’ve got the power in the relationship, and you certainly aren’t going to change. You might not even realize that there’s a need for you to change. Because you’re not listening.

You’ve got to believe you can do it!

Have you had this conversation before?

A: So, what would be a good time for us to meet?

B: Hmm, I’m not sure. I’ll tell you what — why don’t I just call you when I’m available?

A: Uh, okay… but what if I’m busy when you call?

B: What?

A: You know, what if I’m doing something else when you become available?

B: I don’t understand. That doesn’t make sense.

A: Well, you see, I have lots of stuff to do today, and I may be in the middle of doing some of that stuff when you call. So we won’t be able to meet then.

B: Oh, okay. That’s easy to fix: Just don’t do anything until I call you.

A: So, you want me to sit around, doing nothing, so that I’ll be available for you to call me so we can meet?

B: Yes, that’s right.

A: But what about all that other stuff I have to do?

B: Look, this might sound like a dumb question, but help me out here. Am I not way, way more important than you?

A: Yes…

B: So what’s wrong with you just sitting around waiting for me to call — if I call? I own you.

A: Well, right, but the tasks I’m supposed to be doing were given to me by other important people. So, I can’t really ignore them…

B: Are those people more important than me?

A: Technically, they’re equally important, according to the org chart.

B: Hmm… I think I’ll find out how important I am by insisting that you take care of my stuff first.

A: How would that work?

B: Well, if I can bully you into working on my stuff first, and they fire you over it, then I’ll know that I’m less important than the person whose tasks you put off.

A: Wow, that’s tremendously unethical.

B: If you do my stuff first, I won’t fire you for insubordination.

A: So, I guess I’ll just be sitting here, waiting for you then.

B: I AM TEH POWAH!

… or is it just us?

Lifehacker linked to a post over at Zen Habits called, “How to Accept Criticism with Grace and Appreciation.” It’s a great post, and Zen Habits has a lot of good information on how to become a better, happier person. But…

Okay, we get how you shouldn’t immediately blow up when you receive negative criticism. That’s good Internet advice; if everyone followed it, there would be far fewer flame-wars or comment thread dust-ups, and whatnot. But, the ability to take criticism with grace is something that any low-ranking office worker has to master if they ever want to get anywhere.

“Why is this printed on yellow paper? I told you it should be on canary.” Or, “I don’t care if she’s not in the building — get her to sign this right now.” Or, “I called you at 2 o’clock this morning — why didn’t you answer? Where the hell were you?” Add your own office criticisms.

Even better are the times when you overhear your boss criticizing you while talking to someone else. Usually, they’re complaining about your performance (often regarding a project you didn’t even work on) in order to deflect the blame that should have landed squarely on them. Take the criticism with grace or find yourself out of a job, looking for something that matches your skills, and you wind up back where you started.

I once complained about the off-base, whacked-out, and just plain wrong-wrong-wrong criticism, to a manager of mine. (He wasn’t the one criticizing me.)� This is what he said: “Look, part of working for a living is eating shit. That’s mostly what we do all day — we take shit from customers, we take shit from upper management, we take shit from the tech support guys. Professionalism is the ability to eat shit and smile smile smile.”

I’m not sure if he got that last part from a poster or a Vonnegut book.

Be the bigger person. Thank your critic. Eat shit, and smile smile smile.