b3 b0rn.. c0nf0rm, b3 si|3nt .. di3

i am actually quite known to family, relatives, friends and colleagues as someone who has low or no tolerance for people who are slow in grasping concepts/ideas or understanding instructions and explanations. it’s a fault of mine that i am actively striving to improve on.

picture this. you are in a meeting. it is for understanding user requirements for a system design (or bruprint as my dear ex-project manager calls it). it is not the first meeting. nor is it the second. it may be the trillionth meeting for all you know. but you have a team member that insists on repeating the explanation - err actually requesting the users to repeat their explanation on a requirement - yet again … you have lost count of how many times this has been reiterated. you being the coolie that you are is the one saddled with the happy task of minuting this discussion. so you get a bit frazzled when you realise you are to write yet another minutes of meeting that has the same content when you should be able to proceed to other requirements’ discussion.

my solution for this is to be very very quiet and keep it to myself. i can’t very well start berating my own team member for being such a slow coach. but still, the annoyance of having to listen to what i would rate as a broken record being played over and over still gnaws at my insides. but i still keep mum.

this is definitely not good. i work best when i am able to just say what i am feeling at the moment - which is ‘what the heck is taking you too long to understand this?!!! %&$#@$!!’ but i don’t . so all of it is bottled up.

and myself as a bottle is not a good quality bottle. coz the irkness (is there such a word?) that i feel seeps and sneaks out of me during other moments.

it was a few months down the road and the need to keep quiet whenever i feel slightly peeved actually caught up with me. i ended up being a total bitch to the offending party. not in any obvious way. but it is definitely felt by the target. which resulted in me being called in by my project manager for a heart-to-heart on what the eff is going on with his team.

to cut things short. we agreed to disagree. i had to find a way not to easily get peeved when another person is trying to understand a matter. and the other promised to try to cut down on the number of repeated explanation that he would need. and world peace was restored!

not!

now my notorious impatience with all foibles and follies of my fellow earthlings have been revived with a vengeance.

suffice to say, if i had a gun now, some heads would have been blown off (and now i see that this phrasing might raise a few perverted eyebrows.. so be it)