Listening

Abstract

We have all met them: the person who looks at you with glazed eyes, so intent on working out what they’re going to say next that they hear nothing you say and cut you off in mid-sentence to say something that bears very little relationship to what you have just been saying the manager who says: ’Never hesitate to come and see me if you’ve got any problems,’ and when you do make an appointment to see them they spend all the time talking about their own problems the student who complains about every lecture, switches off after about the first five minutes, barely stays awake and says everything is boring and a waste of time the person next to you at the conference who, as the last speaker sits down, says: ‘ Well that was pretty awful. The man didn’t know what he was talking about and anyway I can’t stand people who wear their handkerchief in their top pocket!’