Friday, September 14, 2007

Miscommunication

Recently, according to Sports Illustrated, a Milwaukee Brewers runner was thrown out attempting to steal after getting the steal sign from the thirdbase coach. Happens all the time. The coach guesses wrong, the runner is too slow, the pitcher throws an easy pitch to handle, the catcher makes a great throw, the fielder makes a good tag.

The trouble is, the coach never gave the steal sign. He simply scratched a mosquito bite on his arm which was mistaken by the runner for the teams steal sign.

I wonder how many times in life things go bad simply because of similar completely unintended communication.

Tell your story of some odd miscommunication. It may become an illustration in a future message and give us a few funny moments here on the blog.

3 comments:

Llama Momma said...

One of my favorite miscommunications happened almost ten years ago, with someone who is now one of my closest friends. Denise and her family had just moved from Australia to California, where we were living. I was busy working and going to school, and she left my husband and me a message asking us to bring "supper" for small group the following night. Now, keep in mind we didn't know eachother well at all. I was really annoyed that she would ask us to bring supper for twelve people the day before, and even called another friend from the group to "vent." This other friend wisely said, "You know, that just doesn't sound like Denise at all. Why don't you call her and ask her what she meant by that?"

So I did. I called and said, "So, you want us to bring supper for everyone tomorrow night. What do you have in mind?"

She responded, "Oh, whatever you want. Brownies or a package of storeboought cookies is fine."

In Australia "supper" is a light snack, not a meal.

We still laugh about this miscommunication, and it's a reminder to me to always assume the best in another person because what I hear may not be what they're trying to say!

Laura said...

Almost a year ago my employer acquired another company and we have been going through steps to merge both companies. Through this process we experience miscommunication when someone from one company uses a term familiar to their company yet that term means something different to people from the other company. As you can imagine we have numerous challenges still unraveling including high frustration for many.

Anonymous said...

Not a personal miscommunication experience, but a good example all the same:

Ed was in trouble. He had forgotton his wedding anniversary. His wife was REALLY angry. She told him "Tomorrow morning I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in less than 6 seconds... AND IT BETTER BE THERE!!'"

The next morning Ed got up early and left for work. When his wife woke up
she looked out the window and, sure enough, there was a small, gift-wrapped box which had been left in the
middle of the driveway. Confused, the wife put on her robe and ran out to the
driveway. She brought the box back in the house. She opened it and found a
brand new bathroom scale.

Ed has been missing since Friday. Please pray for him.