To hate being a captive audience?

[MentallyDrained23334]

I feel physically exhausted and in a terrible mood after it. I loathe it in meetings when someone starts talking and spends 20 minutes talking non-stop to make a point that could've been made in three sentences. I hate it on the phone when someone tells me a story, then proceeds to tell me the story again and again and again without coming up for breath. And, like today, I hate it when people drop in at work and never leave.

It's a very relaxed office and we run campaigns throughout the year where we meet people who are involved in the cause. Some of them drop in for a chat, cuppa etc. It's fine when there's something to talk about, quick half hour (2 way) chat or whatever, but people called into the office at 9:30 today and didn't leave till nearly 12. I feel rude ignoring them but after half an hour of them talking about nothing I felt like weeping with frustration. Today I had things to do so was turning back to my computer but they kept talking at me. These aren't people who don't get much company, they work full time, have families, and are off for half term.

My colleagues, while not loving the people who go on and on at meetings or whatever, seem to be able to tolerate but I honestly get so frustrated by it I feel physically tired and annoyed. I love going out with people and socialising and chatting, but cannot bear these one way endless monologues when I am trapped and unable to excuse myself.

AIBU to think people shouldn't just talk at people for no good reason?

I’m with you here. I chair a lot of meetings at work (am very senior) have got myself a reputation as very forceful when it comes to this type of blathering on - no one has got time to listen to that! Drives me insane. Definitely poor chairing to let it happen.

Dp has a habit of doing this usually about people i don't know, working at a place i have no knowledge of. The repeating of bits and going off on a tangent it's near unbearable even when i tell him he is doing it it makes no difference and I am very blunt about it.

It is like he just needs to tell someone whether they are listening is unimportant

Wear headphones plugged in with no music. Tell them you’re really sorry but you need to concentrate

chesty you have no idea how much I'd love to do that . I can't interrupt them if I'm not chairing the meeting though. In everyday conversation I've got no qualms about doing that with repeat offenders I'm good friends with, but it's the people who are nice but you don't know well enough to openly tell to please shut the fuck up who are hard to deal with.

Iwouldrather you sound like what chair should be! When I chair I try to do a 'does anyone disagree with what's been said' to try and prevent god knows how many people reiterating a point.

Hints aren't working! Politely but firmly say 'I'm sorry but I must stop you there as I have a lot to do, it's been lovely seeing you' and then get back to work. If they carry on, say again. A third time you can say 'sorry, but are you okay? Only I've said I can't keep talking but you're still speaking'. Remember it's them being rude, not you! If you are too afraid to be assertive or blunt if necessary they'll just carry on. Sometimes you even have to say it mid sentence with a particularly egregious case if they won't take any cue to let you speak. Your work comes first.

If I'm not chairing a meeting and someone is waffling on about something irrelevant I stop them and say 'Can I make a suggestion. This is very interesting/relevent/insert flattering adjective here. But I think we have gone off topic. It might be best if we put this on the agenda for next time when we will have more time to discuss it.

It never goes on the agenda for next time. Everyone forgets and I don't remind them

This is beyond annoying . My job basically involves being a captive audience every single day to the point when I am at home or with friends or family I have no patience left to hear anyone’s monologues . I have two family members who love to recite their dreams from the night before In great detail and sometimes I find myself faking a coughing fit or sneeze just to get them to stop talking . And if I put my headphones on that’s a sign to people on public transport no I don’t want to talk about the weather or how long we waited on our connection

Ooo DingDong what a good idea! That could work.

Yasnbu. The there's always one that starts to drivel on and on until it turns into being completely irrelevant anyway whilst everyone sits bored brainless wanting to crack on with discussing actual problems.

I feel your pain, but I have had worse. I have a part time job as a clerk, which means that I not only have to listen when some cock who loves the sound of his own voice is repeating everyone else's points at twice the length, but I have to write it all down as well.

Reanimated I often wonder how much the clerk is judging us

Yes!!!!
Had a boss who spoke for over 10 minutes in a meeting. Finally a break, I started talking and she spoke over me. Aargh.
I'm more assertive now. Doesn't have to be rude but I can't stand people "lecturing" me.

Ha ha ha I know exactly how you feel, my husband is the total worst for this, once you start him - there is no and I mean no stopping him! He can talk the hind legs off a heard of donkeys! Drives me absolutely insane .... and we work together! I has the effect of making me almost monosyllabic! Ironically he’s incredibly shy and I have to start all meeting with new people, then once he’s started the dam is broken I have to reel him in again, or I have to ‘take a call’ or reply to an email or check something somewhere else.

This is why I'm glad I work from home, and rarely see people. I have family who don't live in the area so I see them only once every 6 weeks or so, and not 'in passing' when I am busy!

BUT I have a DH who tells me every detail of a programme he is watching/has watched, and I don't give a flying fook about it! I also get running commentary when he is watching some shit on the telly. Thank GOD for the internet, netflix, and headphones! I mean, he doesn't do it ALL the time, but maybe a couple of time a week! When he realises after 10 minutes that I am really not interested, he shuts up!

Then there's this woman who walks her dog around our village. I go for a walk every day, and bump into her about once a week. She is pleasant enough, but when you bump into her, you KNOW you are in for a half hour of your life spent on inane chatter and drivel and bollocks and gossip about people you don't know. She is also incredibly nosey, and has asked me about 20 questions about my life, my job, my husband, where he works, my family, where I was born, my kids, blah blah blah.

I have walked 10 minutes walk out of my way, to avoid bumping into her.

There are a few others too (old colleagues of mine and DH's) who I avoid fervently because they talk for AGES. Me and DH see this one bloke he used to work with now and again (when we visit our old town 30 miles away,) and the last time, he and DH talked for an HOUR while I waited. I was soooooooooooo pissed off. I did wander off a few times, but he was still there; as I said, for an HOUR.

I spotted this same man yesterday when we were in Tesco in that old town, and I ushered DH out of the shop quickly as I spotted him when we were at the checkout. This bloke was looking at the newspapers. Luckily they never spotted each other!

I can't stand the bloke personally. He is misogynistic, racist, and bigoted, and very anti-woman. He is married, but is a twat to his wife, and calls her 'the hag.'

So OP, YANBU. I hate being a captive audience too. I don't understand why some people chat as much as they do about sod-all. Are they bored? Are they so clueless that they assume every person they meet wants to stop and talk for half an hour?

I don't know, but grrr, it's annoying!

There's a man who does this at our residents association meetings. He'll be asked to give some feedback on a subject, say a meeting he's been to, and he goes on and on and on, taking 20 minutes to tell what he could've told in 5. And then when you think he's about to finish up his speech, someone will make a comment and he'll be off again. I think he just loves the sound of his own voice and thinks that he's really interesting. It makes me feel quite violent.

I hate it when people do this! It's utterly selfish, horrible behaviour done by selfish people with no sense of self awareness. These days I am pretty assertive at making an escape from people who talk 'at' me. If they don't have the manners to let me get a word in edgeways occasionally then I don't have the manners to stand and listen to their drivel!

In addition to dingdongdennys idea - in meetings you can suggest a 'car park' flipchart - if someone goes off on a tangent something that's not in the agenda, you note it 'in the car park' for discussion another time or in a different forum.

MIL does this. She told me the other day about a play she'd seen, in great detail.This included that there was an interval, the length of the interval, how busy the bar was, all the things you could choose to drink, what she in fact chose to drink, the queues for the loo, the cleanliness of the loo and the time they were bing-bonged to come back to their seats LIKE I DON'T KNOW HOW THEATRES WORK.

I have even stopped doing all the nodding, "that's nice", "mmm", "did you?", in case I was reinforcing the behaviour, But no - she carries on with gusto even when presented with an unflinching face of stone.

My mother and husband both have a habit of getting bogged down in poinltess information which makes whatever they are telling me three times longer.

"You know you were looking for a new [insert random item]? I saw some at Sainsburys. I went down on Tuesday....oh no hang on, was it Wednesday? No it couldnt have been Wednesday because I was at a meeting at Church on Wednesday morning and I never go shopping in the afternoon because parkings a nightmare.....have you seen what they have done to the car park outside Debenhams? One way only now, is chaos! So yes, was Tuesday I think, I know I saw Janet that day, so no it was Monday then because Janet wanted a lift to Morrisions on Tuesday.....its a shame X shop doesnt do them anymore because they were lovely quality and not a bad price, I suppose they might do them on line but you have probably already looked havent you? Gwen said she had some from.....oh where was it? Might have been Dunhelm......oh no she hasnt got one where she is, might have been Home Bargains then or whats that other one called? Might have been Dunhelm actually if her daughter got them for her, have you looked in there?..............."

All this instead of "Sainsburys have got some [random item] do you want me to pick you one up next time I am in?"

DH does it too, with either "back in the day" or work stories. Ones that could be quite interesting and funny if it werent for "We were at the Dog and Duck....oh no wait it might have been the Red Lion.... No it was the D&D because we hadnt moved to Accacia Avenue by then......" and so on. Or "X happened and I was talking to ..oh whats his name? I cant think of his bloody name...Craig/Carl/Chris....?" IT DOESNT FUCKING MATTER WHAT HIS NAME IS JUST TELL ME WHAT HE FUCKING SAID!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I switch off and then get moaned at for not listening

@pyongyangkipperbang your post made me LOL.

This is what I love about my German friend.

This is me

Someone says 'Hi telstar how are you?'

'welll.. I'm not tooooo bad, especially given that it's nearly November, and I sometimes suffer from a bit of S.A.D, and it's my time of the month, and I get a bit spotty and bloated and I feel fat, and my hair looks shit, and I struggle to get up in the morning, and all that, but yeah I'm cool, ta for asking. '

This is Helga.

Hi Helga, how are you?

'I am fine.'

Mentally Your clerk is definitely judging you . If s/he does shorthand s/he might have rude nicknames for all the longwinded members of the board and you will never know...

My office once organised a huge All Staff Event with a Keynote Speech from the Big Cheese.

So I organised a game of Bullshit Bingo. We agreed all the buzzwords that the Cheese was certain to use, thirty of them IIRC, and I used the Random function in Excel to prepare sheets with eight of them on each. Five pounds a sheet and the winner chose the charity to send the money to.

We raised £200 for CRUK.

DM does this. She can recite complete family histories of people I don't even know. I don't know where she gets all her information. Then in the next breath she will accuse people of wanting to know her business!

I have a colleague like this. She comes to about every other staff meeting as she does not normally work on the day the staff meeting are held.
When she walks in you can see the looks on everyone's faces as as we know the meeting is going to be twice as long. Each team has to give feedback and only that team is meant to speak until the end when they will take any questions from other members of staff. She however butts in saying well I would have done this or done that or that could have been down better and then goes into a huge discription about what she would have done.

She is worst with one as she went for a job in that team and did not get it so she goes out of her way to pull them to bits basically.
And then nothing she says is out in the minutes as most of it is not relevant.
Mind you she is a pain generally, she always expects other staff to stop what they are doing immediately to help her, she pesters staff to do stuff while they are on their break.
I hope this does not sound like I am being nasty- She is deaf, she has a PA from access to work who is meant to help her with phone calls and to sign but quite often she will tap another member of staff on the shoulder and say I need you to make this phone call now,when you query why the PA is not doing it (she lip reads) she says oh I have got such and such doing a report for me (grrrr the PA is not there to do your job she is there to help you with things you would struggle with due to your disability like using the bloody phone)
She also walks in to a room and announces she needs something and expects others to get find whatever it is for her.
In context we have another lady who is deaf and she uses her support correctly and if she does ask for help we gladly give it.

I’ve started using Doodle, the scheduling app, to organise meet-ups with my DM. I log my available windows, she logs hers, we find a match and lock it in. Thus avoiding her preferred method.

If I ask ‘are you free Tuesday late morning for a coffee?’ I get minimum 40 minutes of stream-of-consciousness waffle about what she’s doing all the other days, why, and all things she isn’t doing, could be doing or maybe might change to doing. Things of scintillating interest like her dog’s grooming appointment, or the fact she might make pesto next Thursday. If I’m really lucky it stops there. Otherwise she’ll go on so long that it negates the need to meet up at all.

I should take a leaf out of my 7yo’s book. When grandma subjects her to this, my kid just says (quite politely) ‘I’m going to stop listening now, because it isn’t very interesting to me. Bye, love you!’ And hangs up.