One of my pet irritations in this life is when the person you are directing your conversation to does not look at you. It is something that is so wonderfully and currently demonstrated by my 23 year old, blackberry owning, facebooking, bms-ing, texting sister who (declaring how fantastic she is at multi-tasking) will have cyber conversations with about 10 other people whilst having a REAL LIFE conversation with me....minus eye contact but plus alot of 'Mmm'ing and 'yeah?'.
Now I am not suggesting she sit there like a lunatic staring at me intensely for the entire duration of our conversation but I do expect the odd courteous glance to indicate that she does acknowledge my existence, indeed is interested in what I have to say. ('Mmm'ing does NOT indicate interest)
It is part of those little body language cues that we all use to communicate on a subliminal level...the ones that you can't read when you are driving, hence the reason behind road rage. For example, driver A may have made a genuine mistake in cutting up driver B's ass on the motorway but driver B can't see the apology in driver A's body language and so loses it and adds another 100 to the already overloaded mileage in his car just to drive up driver A's tailpipe to show him 'whose boss' and teach him some feckin' road manners. (use your effin' indicator you effin' muppet!!)
All I'm saying is that eye contact is not only courteous but necessary when communicating effectively with other people.
Look at me when I am speaking to you!! Ok don't. I'll just write up a little rant on my blog, defaming you forever through the medium of the written word as a 23 year old, blackberry owning, facebooking, bms-ing, texting muppet excuse for a sister.
Oh that's so cute....She just said, "Oooo! It's all about YOU isn't it?"
Call me attention seeking, limelight hogger, love-me-do whatever, but when you do it, I expect you to LOOK AT ME WHEN I AM SPEAKING TO YOU.
(I love the little runt really)
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Oh I know what you mean. And it's even worse when they aren't texting, or checking FB - and they still can't meet your eye when you are talking to them!!! Everything else is just way more exciting than what you are saying - so why bother talking to them in the first place? And then they get upset because 'you don't talk to me anymore!'
ReplyDeleteMy sister had a right giggle when she read this post but really, I wrote it entirely whilst she was on her blackberry. But she didnt even bat an eyelid!
ReplyDeleteGrrrr!
;o)
You are so right! I would be terribly disappointed if one my friends did this in a (supposedly) face to face conversation. I do have one who although she doesn't go to the same extremes as your sis does have this annoying habit of Googling everything possible mid conversation - you only have to vaguely query something and she's looking up the latest bestseller/interest rate/weather forecast etc etc. It's terribly tedious! One of these days I'm going to ask her to Google "irritating habits" and see if she gets the message:))
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