From the mouth of babes

Last Sunday, my sister decided to take my nephews to see a live show of Peter Pan. I am always down for live theatre! Well the play was held at an amphitheatre, so I was excited to be able to have a sort of picnic on a sunny day.

We went to Publix right before the show started so that we could get snacks and sandwiches, and normally I wouldn't get a sub sandwich from anywhere but Baldinos, a personal hometown favorite. This time I went ahead and ordered an Italian sub since it was slightly similar to my Baldinos usual. So the Publix guy is putting all the "fixins" on my sub and he puts like two squirts of oil on it and I'm like "hey come on man you can put some more oil on there," and he was like "oh my bad ok, I'll put more on there." Now I was saying it in a light jokey way, you know, "you know 2 squirts is not enough bruh." Well I thought nothing of the interaction, and as we went to check out, my nephew was like "you were very...demanding." I'm standing there like really?? He's like "yes you sounded mean." From the mouth of babes.

Its interesting how you can think you sounded on way but really, what you said was perceived another way. I ended up going back to the substation and apologizing to the Publix guy. He was like "NO! you're fine, I wasn't offended at all, I mean I love you...WAIT!! I LOVE YOU?? What random guy says that? I think he had a Freudian slip there, which was a little weird, but slightly flattering.

Even though I wasn't perceived as mean by the Publix guy, I may have been mean in other areas of life. I know one of my coworkers says that I can say some pretty insensitive things. If I have, I truly am sorry. I think I try my best to resolve conflict because I like hashing things out and being upfront with people. This was why I went back, not to soothe my own ego, but to mend fences. So many arguments can be squashed by just taking the opportunity to apologize when something is said that is hurtful or embarrassing. I think some people can also be in denial about even being wrong, which I have been caught on both sides of that argument, so to speak.

In my communication studies in college, we would attribute this misunderstanding to what we call 'noise' which is not necessarily audible, but can be semantic, psychological, or cultural. In an article on the Society for Technical Communication, Noise refers to anything introduced into the message that is not included in it by [the] sender. I think this happens a lot in general, so from now on I will proofread the messages in my head before they are sent from my mouth, because I think my "firewall" may have been down on various occasions, causing unintended viruses. LOL!!