Each and every of us must be knowing at least one person who falls in the category of "people who just can't shut up". Not all of them are bad, some of them are really fun to talk to, but there are a few who go on and on about the most boring topics like, well mostly about themselves. I happened to know a few such people and they are solely responsible for me not signing into messengers as often as i used to.
After a couple of days it becomes really difficult to find topics to talk about and its a pain in carrying on the conversation. Not replying is down right rude and should be used only as the last resort. You must try and maintain a reasonable "conversation buffer" period between any consecutive conversation between yourself and such a person. Personally, i would consider 3 days a reasonable value for this "conversation buffer". This value can vary based on the average length of the conversations and the amount of boredom caused. Fortunately for you, you don't have to get into those complex calculations since I have come up with a series of plans to combat this threat to humanity.
Plan A: If your messenger comes with an invisible mode or an away mode, put it to use. This plan follows the popular principle of "prevention is better than cure". It's best to sign in in away mode and not reply when the said specimen messages you. It certainly beats carrying on the seemingly endless conversation.
Plan B: Keep talking about yourself. This plan was designed after the "Give a taste of their own medicine" principle. This is the most effective plan as per my experience. After trying this out on my test subjects, i found it to be effective 75% of the time. The said subjects can't stand it if they don't get a chance to talk about themselves. Don't worry if you can't come up with interesting topics about yourself, the beauty of this plan is that the boring topics are much more effective in getting the other person to end the conversation.
Plan C: Make excuses. I found that the most effective excuse is "I am having internet trouble, I don't think i am getting your messages". Feel free to use your creativity while coming up with such messages, and don't forget to leave me a comment if you stumble upon some good excuses.
Plan D: Don't reply. This is to be used only as the last resort, if all of the above plans fail and if that person is of no strategic importance to you or your career. The after effects of this plan can include an indifferent attitude from that person towards you. These after effects however, can be mitigated if the plan is used in moderation. The trick is to message the person the next day and make an excuse like "Sorry, it was my brother/sister using the computer the other day"
I hope this post is of help to you in dealing with such people. Do leave a comment if you have any other such plans that I don't know of
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you know what happens with me in such cases..By mistake I use some very very wrong words which should never been used :).
ReplyDeleteFor example, once a girl was telling me that for her bday how her husband is planning for a surprise and she told me that she wanted to return this favor back doing a surprise thing for him on his birthday...
I used a term 'competition' for this thing and after realizing my mistake I corrected that word to 'healthy competition' :)
Hope she will not talk to me again :)