Listening

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Ever take speech class? Then you know that listening is the second part of the two-party thing called "communication" One person speaks, another listens. Or perhaps it's body language, or letter-writing... but it isn't communication if there aren't two parties participating.

And I ask you: can we sit down all of the neglectful professional parties of the world and show them the speak:listen communication diagram?

Yesterday I was met with two cases of the listen-less speaking.

Heading up a work project--an awfully massive one, in size if not in notorioty at this point-- that is to go live on the day I leave to visit my family for the holidays, I'm left with very little time to do the necessary pre-holiday things. For instance, haircut. So yesterday, between my extra Saturday shift and my Christmas shopping, I got stuck scheduling my haircut with a woman at my salon who has never cut my hair before.

Now, some of you have seen my hair. It's baby-fine. It's a little thin, not in a "balding" way, I just don't have a lot of hair. And when it's layered, it does this frightening puppy-dog ear "poofy" thing at the top and it limply clings to my neck at the bottom. But a little layering is good, right, so I tell the woman that, A) I'm getting married in June so I'd like to keep it a little long, and B) the texture and quantity of my hair makes layers terribly unflattering unless you limit the layers to under an inch from longest to shortest part.

She asks me to remove my glasses, and when I get to put them back on, my hair is A) short and B) layered almost all the way up to the top, making my thin hair almost nonexistent. I politely tell her that it is not what I asked for, and she gets snotty and sort of runs away.

Fast-forward to the evening, and I'm post-hair grumpy and kind of blue. And Tom is super sore from pulling all of his extra shifts, so I suggest he gets a massage. And he suggests that I get a massage. And yes! Little Miss Sunshine is playing a block away and we've been wanting to see it again! The universe wants us to do this!

I manage to get the sterotypical muscley, butch eastern european woman who asks me "medium or hard?" I say medium. She goes hard. So much so that I'm actually screaming. We're talking continual searing pain, and when I suggest that I'm in a lot of pain, she says "s'ok s'ok s'ok." When I keep expressing that, no, I'm in an uncomfortable, unusual amount of pain, she keeps saying "relax." RELAX? Are you using razorblades? What are you doing? I decide to do lamaze breathing exercises, because perhaps this amount of mind-numbing pain is good for me.

By the end of the session, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. Everything that should have loosened up-- and I didn't feel so bad to begin with-- now has limited mobility. I can't really turn my head. It turns out, according to my sweet former-physical-therapist mother-in-law, that I have sensitive blood vessels, and in an excess of pressure, they delivered an excess of fluid and broke, flooding my neck, my forearms, my legs, my butt, with pockets of internal bleeding. If you look at any of those parts of my body right now, you can actually see the huge red bumps. So much for Little Miss Sunshine. Or sitting comfortably at my desk for the remaining five days before my project ends.

So, what I'm saying here, is... people should listen. When someone is paying for something like a haircut or a massage, their requests should be heeded if possible. It is their hair, their body, and they've lived with it for... in my case, 27 years. So if I say that my hair is fine and my body is in pain, I just don't want to end up with a thinned-out bob and a goose egg the size and color of Mars on my neck.

How about you guys? Do you ever struggle with professionals and their listening capabilities? Tell me I'm not alone, here...