Why is everyone away with the fairies?

[xAwaywiththefairiesx]

Is it just me or have listening skills and attention spans declined rapidly in the last 10 years or so?

Nobody bloody listens or retains information any more.

Yesterday, I was at work. Patient transport turns up with a patient to transfer to us. I said, "Oh hi, have you got Mr Smith?" (All names have been changed) and the man says "yeah".
OK, great. I ring for the staff in the department that need to collect Mr Smith while patient transport guy goes to collect Mr Smith from the ambulance. I start typing up the paperwork to admit Mr Smith.
Our staff come down, with the necessary equipment to transport Mr Smith, and just then, who should come through the doors but a perfectly mobile Mrs Jones??!!
I said "that's not Mr Smith!!" and he said "nah" I asked him why he said it was and he just shrugged.
So I have to send the staff back again, with their equipment, get hold of the staff that need to collect Mrs Jones, and wait for them to come down.
All the while patient transport is stood there tapping his foot and looking at his watch like he has no idea it was him that caused the delay.

This is just one irritating incident. I find noone takes in information, noone listens, I have to send people times, dates etc 100 squilion times before it goes in. The parents WhatsApp group is full of questions the school has emailed to everyone already and all day long at work people reply to my emails asking stuff that is in the email they are replying to.
My husband has asked me three times today what shifts I am working next week.
The delivery people will completely ignore notes telling them where to leave parcels.
People in shops just stare blankly at you when you ask them very simple questions, or ask you to repeat yourself because they weren't listening.

I bet even on this thread, mumsnetters will comment having not read it properly.

Is everyone just away with the fucking fairies?!

I wonder if more people are disassociated now with CoL crisis and being more stressed. I myself went through a period where I was living somewhere that held very bad memories and people I wanted to avoid and I think I was disassociating. It only became apparent after I moved somewhere that didn't trigger the same reaction though. In the new place I was better at being more aware of my surroundings and taking in what other people say.

Screens and social media don't help either. I feel like this is something I have to be intentional about.

Because we're all in perimenopause. 👑

Everyone is totally overloaded with information.

Our brain is not wired to deal with the tsunami of information thrown at us every single minute of every day. I am convinced it is causing stress, anxiety and exhaustion.

The only way to deal with this is to literally unplug and switch your phone/tablet off and re regulate. En masse that is unlikely but possible.

In my job I've noticed the same. People half listening and agreeing to what you're saying. I now ask questions like, which company are you from? and what's the name? Instead of presuming and them agreeing with me. It tends to wake them up a little!

Hi @xAwaywiththefairiesx
That is frustrating. What can you do about it? Perhaps change your approach with transport so that they give more than a binary Yes/No. What is the patient's name? Who do you have in transport please? Answer = name of patient.

Husband = have a talk how it is important you feel heard and this is how he can do that.

You may feel you shouldn't have to change but to get what you want, you need to. Your expectations aren't being met with how things are.

Best wishes x

@xAwaywiththefairiesx TLDR

Only joking 😊

I agree with you.

I had a classic one today. Colleague wants a meeting. I Teams message I can do anytime apart from 1.30 pm. She replies, great see you at 1:30. <bangs head on table>. Perhaps I am just old fashioned because I actually read emails, messages and letters.

Yes i hear you !
As for the Patient Transport, I’ve also worked with. it’s practically Min wage and very stressful as are most jobs these days.
I feel like I’m talking to the brick wall most days and so have got to the point of not talking and just getting through the day.

I think it's down to a combination of social media, the development of the capabilities of phones, and the increasing over-reliance on them.

What started with the occasional major reaction to something by somebody famous is now everybody trying to have the same significance to anything they don't like.
As a result, everything everywhere feels the need to proactively apologise/protect themselves against any minor disagreement from a customer/viewer etc.
I've had hospital appointments with questionnaires etc. where what was a simple "are you pregnant?" has become a labyrinthine series of hidden tests to try and rule out the possibility of lies or incorrect replies.

Even YouTube videos turned to condensed clips lasting a few seconds containing their key points/highlights or whatever, and they're accessible anywhere to anyone with a phone. Whenever people have a few minutes' wait, they turn to watching these clips to pass the time, so nowadays these individuals are incapable of paying any attention to anything lasting longer than them. You can see people drifting off in the middle of a conversation, and sometimes stop completely and turn to their phones. Kids watching too much yank crap don't even know how to cross the road properly.

Want any information about anything? You'd better hope you have a phone with access to WiFi or the disposable mobile data for it. Landlines are being shut down as we speak because obviously the internet is perfect and never cuts out.

All I can say is try to resist it as best you can, for as long as you can. I personally find people that are already gone can't be helped, and in themselves aren't worth your attention. You could probably physically walk away and they wouldn't notice.

I sincerely fear for humanity.

How do you even respond to that? I've tried 'sorry I said anytime except 1.30' but the apology makes it seem like I was the one at fault. But then a 'the previous email says any time except 1.30, so could you do another time?' gets people defensive and then you still seem to be the one in the wrong somehow as your response was shirty or something. Probably me being oversensitive rather than seeing it as a them issue but genuinely feels like there's no painless way out.

Oh FFS.

See this is the sort of shite I'm talking about.

Nothing to do with me being boring, bad at communicating, having a monotone voice, not understanding ADHD, me having ADHD etc.

People just don't listen. That was a short, clear, concise piece of written information 😅

I think the only reply to that is 'no, you won't'.

Another classic example appears below. @medievalpenny suggests asking who they have. A poster confidently replies 'They already did, it's in the OP'. But the OP says they asked 'Do you have Mrs X?' not 'Who do you have?'

That 1.30 case is an example of people who construct rather than listen. By that I mean they take a few words or concepts and construct in their head what they think the other person is saying rather than actually listening or reading what has been said. The problem is that more often than not the construction approach gets it right so the person doesn't get disincentivised from doing it.

I messaged back:

“ I can’t make 1.30 pm, as stated above 😊”

<I get all my passive aggression out through the use of smiley faces>

A bit OT but see this sort of communication is why I feel frustrated when talking with people, and why autistic people are often misunderstood to mean something different.

If I wrote that exact statement, I would mean the smile 100% as a way of showing that I am not upset or annoyed. It would show that I am genuinely smiling so they don’t take my directness (“as stated above”) the wrong way.

But when some people use smileys without really meaning them, communication becomes complicated. I can’t tell if they truly mean it or not, and that makes my way of showing sincerity read as the opposite of what I intend.

I wish people would simply say what they mean and mean what they say.

Perhaps, OP @xAwaywiththefairiesx , it's this sort of mixed signal communication in society that can make people misread/miscommunicate and everyone is just assuming/interpreting what should otherwise be clear. By the way, just to be clear, I agree with your OP in general.

I think a lot of people are used to such bite sized information that we fail to process anything that requires focus. I see this a LOT with my undergraduates. We have gone from assigning roughly 100 pages a week to read to barely 20 and yet it's too much for them.
I had undergraduates tell me that it would be easier if I set up a class WhatsApp rather than emailing them information.
We had a bunch of undergraduates who failed to take their resit exam/test because they coudn't be bothered to read their email.
On a daily basis I get 20 emails from students asking for information about something that is on the actual module website. I often ask them to take a screenshot of what they CAN see and miraculously, the information is there.
This is near constant and much worse than ten years ago.

Also people are flakey. A lot more flakey. I think it's because we can communicate instantly. Earlier if you planned a dinner if you didn't show there would be no way of letting someone know. Plans were plans.

And yes, my colleagues are a lot flakier than a decade ago. My younger colleagues require so much hand holding. 'Here's how you do X'- I need to send an email, explain it in person, and even then they don't get it. I can see they are not trying because they think (and I've heard a couple of people say this openly) that if they are incompetent enough no one will ask them to do X again. It drives me insane. Then when they don't get promoted they are astonished...

The bit about planned incompetence at work is shocking. Especially if it’s part of their role.

I’ve heard other people, including my lecturer friends say similar things about today’s students.

I also agree that people are flakier. My friends drive me crazy because they are constantly cancelling at the last minute or are running way late. Easier to do by message too as you’re one more step removed from the emotions of letting people down. Harder to do that when phoning.

We are seeing some of these issues with our graduate trainees. I think it's crept up on us and now we are at a point where we need to start being firmer about expectations and accountability. For instance, that it's not acceptable to fail to take notes in a meeting and then ask for the meeting to be repeated because you can't remember what was discussed!