Re: Ask for clarification
If you're questioning what someone told you for any reason, ask them for clarification.
This post is a reply to Imperfect. On their post, they explain how someone asked them for help with something, and somehow they thought that person had gotten nothing done. Before letting irritation set in, they asked for clarification and found out the person had in fact done it all, and really only needed help with a small thing.
Back when I worked as a dev, asking for clarification was akin to what Imperfect described: making sure we are on the same page, explaining what attempts were made at fixing the issue etc.
When I read the text last week, though, it hit me in a different way because of the linguistic mess that is my life. I am Brazilian, my husband is Estonian, he lived most of his life in Sweden and his mom lives there still. Now we both live in Spain, and the language we speak at home is English. I speak Swedish with his mom, but with my Brazilian-Swedish dialect and her Estonian-Swedish variant, things go wrong in translation all the time.
I say things like "we simply must do whatever!" -- which is a very normal Brazilian way of saying I am excited about maybe getting to do that thing, at some point, some day, who knows -- and she thinks I am forcing her to do it right now.
She says the food I cook is "quite ok" and it breaks my heart as to me, this means it's neither good nor bad, it's just MEH -- but for her it means it's "great".
Once I suggested now that she's retired, she should find a hobby, maybe enroll in art classes, maybe yoga? It turned into a drama because of all the "pressure" I was putting on her. Tears were spilled over this, I kid you not. I really wasn't. Or at least, it wasn't my intention, it was just a suggestion. But you know what they say, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", lol.
She visits twice a year. With every visit, we improve our communication skills. We finally know not to assume what the other means.
The phrase we say to each other the most is "vad menar du?" or "what do you mean?", and not in a passive-aggressive way, but in a genuine asking-for-clarification way. We now ask for clarification ten times a day.
And then we can all agree the food was awesome, I am in fact a great cook, the plants could do with a little more water, the joke was funny after all, and we should definitely try to maybe get to do that thing sometime in a totally non-forced, non-committal, no-pressure way.
Source: Ask for clarification
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