how to get people to answer my questions, without sounding rude or snarky

by Alison Green on March 26, 2025

A reader writes:

I need help figuring out how to point out to someone they haven’t answered my question in a way that doesn’t sound rude.

I’m a 40-year-old woman who has recently been diagnosed with both ADHD and auditory processing disorder. I’ve found that this is the reason why I have a hard time holding a lot of verbal information in my head. And this is why for my entire life I’ve been dealing with a communication problem that I don’t know how to handle.

The problem is this: I ask someone a question, but they don’t answer my question. They reply with a word salad of vagueness and unnecessary information, and I’m left not knowing what the answer to my question is. I’ve had this problem both communicating in person and via instant messaging platforms such as Teams.

I’ve encountered this problem with several different coworkers at various companies over the past 20 years. Here are examples of conversations I’ve had. Please note these are not word for word what was said, because I can’t remember exactly what was said.

Example #1 (in-person conversation)
Me: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?
Bill: I was going to have a meeting with Bob but he canceled on me. They are scheduling way too many meetings for me I can’t get any work done blah blah blah blah…

At this point my brain gets overwhelmed with all the unnecessary information and I walk away. And 20 minutes later, I realize they never answered my question.

Example #2 (in-person conversation)
Me: Hey Peter, I’m getting ready to order the teapots, I just wanted to verify that nothing’s changed. We still need five, correct?
Peter: Well, Joanna thinks we only need three, but I think we need more like eight. Last time we went with seven and that still wasn’t enough.
Me (trying to process): Um, okay, so … um … how many should I order this time?
Peter: See, once we get this new automated ordering system in place, we won’t have to go through any of this manual ordering. All that will need to be done is push a button and everything’s done. No need for manual entry.
Me: Yeah, I hear ya. But in the meantime we still have to do it the old way, so how many teapots should I order?
Peter: I used to order 10 teapots every month, but that got to be too much. And I need to renew our Peppermint license.
Me: Wait a minute, I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to use Peppermint anymore? That it was causing too many problems?
Peter: Bob said he didn’t think it was that big a deal.
Me: Not a big deal? It’s making our teapots run slow, we talked about this in last week’s meeting, I thought we all agreed we were going to start using Chamomile tea from now on?
Peter: Chamomile is crap, it never works like it’s supposed to.
And then we go back and forth about which tea we said we were going to use and 20 minutes later when I’m back at my desk, I realize Peter never told me how many teapots to order.

I also encounter this problem with instant messaging like Teams.
Conversation #3 (instant messaging)
Me: Hi Michael. The Jersey store has a new employee, Peter Gibbons. I was just checking to see if you’ve sent him the electronic onboarding packet yet?
Michael: Hey!
I wait for him to answer my question, but he doesn’t. So after waiting about 15 minutes, I message again:
Me: Hi Michael. So the Jersey store has a new employee, Peter Gibbons. I’m just double checking that you’ve sent them their onboarding packet?
Michael: I’ve only used the onboarding function primarily for the California and Texas locations. Usually, when we already have the employee’s information, the previous accountant would just add them to the system. I’m working on giving access to the general managers to send it themselves, but I’m still working on it.
Me: Okay, thanks but I feel you didn’t really answer my question. I’m just trying to confirm if you’ve sent Peter the onboarding package or not?
I wait and after 10 minutes they respond.
Michael: No, I have not.
Me: Okay, thanks.

When I told a friend of mine about conversation #3, she said I was rude. Over the years I have encountered this situation both at work and in personal relationships, so I know it is going to keep happening to me.

Yes, it is a little easier for me to collect my thoughts when communicating via email, but sometimes I’ll send an email and the other person will call me on the phone or come over and talk to me in person about the email, so I can’t always get around not talking in person.

So can you provide me with the words I can say when a person doesn’t answer my question, both in person and instant messaging, that doesn’t come across as rude or snarky?

I think anyone, diagnoses or no diagnoses, would find the first two conversations frustrating! You asked a direct question and got a bunch of information that didn’t answer it.

The basic formulation to use when that happens: “Understood! What I need to know is X, because of Y — can you tell me that?”

So it could sound like this:

You: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?
Bill: I was going to have a meeting with Bob but he canceled on me. They are scheduling way too many meetings for me I can’t get any work done blah blah blah blah…
You: Understood! I’m trying to see who’s available to meet with a new client today — do you have time this afternoon?

You: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?
Bill: I was going to have a meeting with Bob but he canceled on me. They are scheduling way too many meetings for me I can’t get any work done blah blah blah blah…
You: Understood! Do you have anything that is still on the schedule for today? I’m trying to figure out which conference rooms will be free and when.
Bill: I was going to to use the Oatmeal Lounge at 2, but now I don’t know because blah blah blah…
You: OK! I need to know which conference rooms will be open. It sounds like I shouldn’t plan on that one, but if it frees up, can you tell me? (Restating what you need from him and why, and asking for specific actions.)

You: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?
Bill: I was going to have a meeting with Bob but he canceled on me. They are scheduling way too many meetings for me I can’t get any work done blah blah blah blah…
You: I’m trying to figure out when the Oatmeal Lounge will be free. Do you have anything scheduled in there today?:

In your example #2, you did a good job of restating what you needed, but then Peter introduced a curveball that was important to talk about too (the peppermint situation) and you didn’t realize until later that you never got back to your original question. In that case, once you realized that, you should just go back to Peter and say, “We got sidetracked about peppermint and we never nailed down how many teapots I should order. Can you give me the exact number you want me to order?”

In fact, whenever you realize later that your brain got overwhelmed and you didn’t get the answer you needed, that’s the approach to use: go back to the person, name what happened (“I realized we didn’t nail this down”), and ask again. You don’t need to feel weird about that; that’s a thing that happens sometimes, and it’s fine to just be super matter-of-fact about “whoops, just realized I still need info on this.” Because you’re feeling frustrated, I think you’re worried that going back a second time to say, essentially, “dude, we still haven’t resolved this” will seem aggressive (because you’re feeling kind of aggressive at that point), but it’s a normal and commonplace thing that happens, and they don’t need to know you’re privately aggravated.

The third conversation is interesting because in that one, I think Michael did answer your question. You were looking for a yes or no, and he didn’t give you one of those words, but he did give you the substance of a no: you asked if a New Jersey employee received an onboarding packet, and he replied that he’s only sending those for California and Texas locations. When you responded that that didn’t answer your question, that’s the piece that’s reading as rude to your friend — because it came across as a bit like, “I am demanding that you answer me in a very literal yes/no format, regardless of what you just said.” I can see where you weren’t 100% sure from Michael’s initial response (he said he was using the onboarding function primarily for California and Texas locations, which leaves room for occasionally using it elsewhere), but it would have been more polite/collegial to reply with something more like, “So just to confirm, Peter Gibbons didn’t get one, right?”

A lot of handling these conversations without sounding snarky is just about:
* Restating what you need if you don’t have an answer yet — and explaining why, which can help people narrow in on what will be helpful to share and what won’t. I know you’re thinking it should be clear to them at the start, but it’s common for the other person’s answer to be affected by their own frame of reference/priorities/current focus, which may be different from the ones you have in play.
* Being matter-of-fact and not letting your frustration show — trying to see it as “hmmm, that didn’t work because humans are human-ing, let me try again” rather than “WTF is up with this word salad?”
* Instead of focusing on “how to point out someone hasn’t answered my question,” focus on “how to get this question answered” — which is a subtle difference, but a real one. The point isn’t to make them understand they haven’t answered you; the point is just to get the answer.
* Being willing to go back after the fact if you realize you’re still not clear.

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{ 372 comments }

{ 372 comments… read them below }

  1. Zona the Great*

    Why not ask the end question you need answered instead of the run-up to it. “Hey Bob, are you using conference room B today at 3?”

    1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      I like this point. It might help to start asking more specific follow-up questions if the original one was vague and resulted in a firehose of information.

    2. Oliver*

      Yeah I completely agree with this for question #1. If a coworker (not like, my boss or someone) asks me a question like “got any meetings today,” I’m very likely to assume this is a casual hallway conversation, not a request for Work Related Information if that makes sense. It’s the equivalent of when in Slack someone messages just “hi” or “can we get on a call” without context. If you’ve got some kind of work agenda behind your question, it’s best to state that up front.
      For the other two questions though, it does seem like your coworkers are going off on a whole ramble, and it’s a real skill to be able to pin them down on a particular answer. Like, no it doesn’t matter what your thoughts are on coffee pots if you need a specific order for teapots.

      In these kinds of situations it can be helpful to circle back using a written format instead of a verbal one. Like, if Peter gets off topic on coffee pots, you can ping him on Slack or Teams to say something like “Hey, I realized I didn’t get an answer from you on how many tea pots we need to order this month. Usually we’ve been ordering five. Is that good for this month?”. I think people tend to be less chatty when they’re writing than when they’re speaking.

      1. stk*

        I really agree with this too. I have one specific colleague who can honestly make me doubt my own sanity they go off on so many tangents/add so much extra information about so many things, and being specific is the only way to even begin to get an actual answer. And I think you’ve made a good point that people answer the question they THINK they’re being asked! I think that’s why it can help to add in why you need to know, so people know “are you using the conference room?” means “I need a room, is this one free?”, not “so what are you up to right now?”

      2. Mango Freak*

        If someone Slacks me just “hey!” I mostly don’t respond anymore. they can skip to the next part already.

        1. Aww, coffee, no*

          Yes, but that wasn’t OP. OP said ‘Hi’ and asked the question, all in one go, but then colleague just said ‘hey’ and didn’t answer the question.
          Which leaves OP still needing an answer to their original question.

          1. amoeba*

            Yeah, that’s like the next level of people just writing “Hey”! The kindest interpretation I can come up with is that they were planning to reply and got distracted…

            1. Allonge*

              They are at work. It happens that you start something but another, more important / urgent thing comes in. Like, your manager walks into your office. You get a phonecall from a client you have to answer. Or you need to run to the bathroom. Or your laptop freezes.

              I find it very unlikely that Michael intentionally left OP hanging for 15 minutes just for funsies.

      3. amoeba*

        Yeah, honestly, I also tend to ramble a little bit sometimes, but if I was doing anything close to the examples here, I’m sure my coworkers would lose their calm with me in about 30 seconds!

      4. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        “I think we agreed on 5 teapots. I’m going to place that order at 2 pm so let me know before then if I got my wires crossed.”

        We do this in my workplace all the time, we call it negative notice.

        The LW might want to learn some vague NT- friendly phrases like, just checking my understanding, did I get that right, etc. Just put it in terms of herself rather than the other person (“wasnt sure if we landed on 5 or 7”).

        1. Great Frogs of Literature*

          I often make technical changes based on requests from coworkers, and I get a LOT of mileage out of phrases like, “To clarify, you want me to…” “To be clear, do you want X or Y?” or “To make sure I understand, you’re asking for…”

    3. Bunch Harmon*

      As someone with the same diagnoses as the OP – your suggestion is a lot harder than it sounds. I have a very hard time distilling questions down to the basics. Either I ask questions like the OP, or I ramble with too many details. Generally people start to glaze over when I do the latter, so I tend to err on the side of very short questions – but still often don’t phrase the question well.

      1. spiriferida*

        Figuring out the right question to get the answer you need and how to ask it is definitely a skill! But it’s thankfully one the LW can work on. Even if you don’t ask the question the right way the first time around, being able to look back at a communication and figure out that you aren’t asking in a way your audience understands or you’re asking the wrong question for the answer you need means that when you do it the second time, you’re not just asking the same question again at a higher frustration level.

        1. sacados*

          Otherwise you’ll just end up with 42, and then you have to spend eons building a gosh-darn WHOLE NEW MACHINE to figure out what question that was the answer to!

        2. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          Yes. Notably, “try to distill your question to the critical information” is actionable; “hope that Bill gets better at intuiting the purpose behind the question,” while it would be nice, is not.

      2. Bitte Meddler*

        I’ve almost got my mother trained to ask the question she actually needs an answer to.

        Example: She wants to offer me some food she just made.

        Her: “Have you eaten?”
        Me: “Today? Yes.”

        That gets us nowhere. And she didn’t really want to know if I’ve eaten anything today. What she wants to know is if I want any of the food she just made.

        Better version:
        Her: “Would you like any of this meatloaf before I put it away in the fridge?”

        1. LiptonT4Me*

          My mother does this too and because I am autistic, 90% of the time I have no idea what she is asking me. And then she gets mad that I didn’t answer her question. (If I could have only figured out what she was asking)

        3. Heffalump*

          The linguist Deborah Tannen says that in Thailand, “Have you eaten?” is a greeting, just as “How are you?” is a greeting in American culture.

        4. amoeba*

          To be fair, to me, “have you eaten” would be 100% clear! I mean, obviously, the answer will always be “yes” for anybody but a newborn baby if you want to take it super literally, but in reality, I’ve never heard it in any context but “have you already had your breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever mealtime was last or do you want some food?”

          1. Hyena*

            Whether it’s clear or not, it’s still a question that requires a followup on one of our parts – either me asking “why?” or the inquirer asking “I made some meatloaf, do you want some?” if I say I haven’t eaten yet. It’s inefficient. Give more relevant information up front to receive a better answer off the bat.

            1. Claire*

              Where I’m from, “Have you eaten?” is another way of asking if you’re hungry. So it might be the better question, because even if you don’t want my meatloaf, I’m going to offer you something else.

          2. Irish Teacher.*

            I mean, I get that the person means, “would you like something to eat?” but…I’m still never sure how to answer because sometimes I haven’t eaten but there is a reason for that, like I’m not hungry and sometimes I have eaten but would still like something else and often I don’t know if I’d like something to eat or not because I don’t know what they are offering.

            And you can’t really say, “well, yes, I did eat but I’d still like x or y if you are offering but otherwise I’m good.”

            1. LL*

              I would just say yes or no and then when they follow-up, because they’re saying something in response to your answer, right?, I’d just say No thanks, I don’t want [whatever was offered] or yes please, I’ll have some.

            2. JB*

              “Yes” and “no” are not the answers you’re supposed to give to that question. Some possible responses to “have you eaten” include:

              “I’m fine, thanks” or “I just ate” (=I don’t want anything to eat right now)
              “I could eat” (=I might be interested if you’re offering)
              “Actually, I’m starving” (=yes, please offer me food)

              Yes or no would both be strange ways to answer the question, because the person is not literally caring when you last ate, they’re saying “I can feed you/we can grab a bite if you’re hungry”.

      3. Tiger Snake*

        Sure, but OP has just as much responsibility to make sur the questions they’re asking are not being misunderstood, as her coworkers do to actually answer the questions. All communication is a compromise where both people need to work outside their comfort zones and stretch for it.

        After all; the example you’re giving of the problem you have? It’s the same problem as the responses that OP gave examples of – Bill rambled, and Peter err’d on the side of a short response but it wasn’t well phrased.
        Perhaps they also have ADHD, or perhaps that’s just how their brains work – that doesn’t change that OP didn’t get the info she wants but her coworkers think they answered the question they were asked.

        1. LL*

          Yeah, this is the other thing. A lot of people with ADHD give rambling answers to things! So there’s a chance the people are responding that way because they also have ADHD! I don’t know why people just assume the other person doesn’t have any issues whatsoever that could be affecting this.

      5. Kelsi*

        I also have the same as OP, and I can struggle to turn the specifics into a question format, but I find for me there’s a lot of value in a format of Question + One sentence about why I’m asking, because I can usually articulate that. So:

        “Do you have any meetings today? I’m asking because Jane told me to expect an urgent project but not an exact time, and I want to have a sense of whether you’ll be available to help.”

        “Do you have any meetings today? I thought it might be a good day for the team to go out to lunch together if not.”

        “Do you have any meetings today? The board room is flooded, so I wanted to make sure you knew to use a different room.”

    4. e271828*

      This would be much easier for me to answer, too.

      “Hey, do you have any meetings scheduled today?” is a social-interaction prompt. “Are you free for a meeting with a new client at 3?” gets the querent the exact info they need without me running through my entire schedule and its contingencies in my head.

    5. Mockingjay*

      Sometimes we worry about not using an intro or ‘softening’ language in interactions with coworkers – there’s been a shift in many workplaces to a more relaxed, collaborative atmosphere instead of a strict hierarchy of boss says A, you do A. Which is great most of the time, until you hit a deadline or need to check off something and Pete is telling you about the sports game he watched instead of providing the sales figures.

      It’s okay to be more precise in your wording to elicit the info you need or to restate your question if your coworker’s conversation wanders off course. Use a “Bottom Line Up Front” approach with a warm tone and that should clarify most interactions.

    6. Mesquito*

      I agree! More direct questions would set the tone for a more direct conversation. These questions are getting answers that match their tone, very broad and open ended conversation starters.

      1. Jaydee*

        The first question is the only one that’s really open ended. The second and third could be completely answered with a “yes” or “no” (or maybe a “no, we should order 7”).

        For the first question, I think LW should think about what the shortest possible answer is to the question they’re asking and whether that would give them the information they want.

        LW: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings today?
        Bill: Yes. (Or “no”)

        That probably didn’t provide the information LW was looking for. So a better question would be something more specific like “Hey, Bill, are you available to do X at Y o’clock?” or “Hey, Bill, are you using the conference room today?”

        The second question was fine. If the answer is yes, that’s all you need. If it’s no, you need a different number. So maybe adding “or is there a different number we need” would help. But that’s really kind of implied or an easy enough follow-up. Here the problem is really that Peter went off on a tangent and muddied the waters more than clarifying them. I think this is a time to focus on redirection back to the main topic. Maybe having a written note on hand that says “confirm number of teapots to order with Peter” that LW can refer back to before ending the convo to say “oh, so I don’t think I got an answer to my original question since we started talking about Peppermint vs Chamomile tea. Did we figure out a final number of teapots to order this time?”

        For the last one, honestly I didn’t see it as rude. It seemed like the question could be completely answered with a yes or no, and Michael didn’t clearly answer it. I don’t think it’s rude to ask for a more clear answer even if you could possibly infer the answer from what was said. Could the follow-up have been phrased even softer? Maybe. But the way LW said it was direct but not really rude.

    7. Frosty*

      I would also be wary of anyone asking me “have any meetings today?” because it sounds like they are about to ask me to do something, and then I’m trapped into something because they perceive my time as “open”.

      Asking for what you want is a much better way – “can you meet with me this afternoon?” “Are you using the boardroom this afternoon, because I’d like to book it if you aren’t”.

      1. Zona the Great*

        It reminds me of being an adolescent girl and my friends would call and ask the dreaded, “hey what are you doing today”. It wasn’t actually a curious question– they wanted to ask to hang out. If I answered with “nothing” and then said no to hanging out, I’d get attitude back. “But you said you weren’t doing anything!”

        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          I was the master of “I’m not sure yet, have to check with my mom, what are you up to?” My mom liked my friends and the chances she wouldn’t let me hang out on a summer afternoon were low, but she was fine with me using her as an excuse!

        2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

          Right? Doing nothing is a lovely and glorious thing; it means we have unstructured time in which to luxuriate. But other people sometimes hear it as, “Ugh, I’d rather do nothing than hang out with you.”

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Interestingly, as long as you keep the tone light, it’s generally fine to dodge the question and answer with: “Why do you ask?”

          You can then respond to the more specific statement (“I wanted to invite you to go to the beach with me!”) and never answer the broader question.

      2. Peanut Hamper*

        100% agree.

        My response to the question “Are you busy this afternoon?” is almost always “That depends entirely on what you are going to ask me to do.”

    8. Arrietty*

      It’s not always as straightforward as that, though. Sometimes you need some contextual information that will affect the question you’re actually asking.

      1. Frosty*

        You can give the context and still ask a straightforward question though. Many people need to know “why” you’re asking something in order to give the answer. Otherwise it can be seen as a social prompt (which is how Brian answered about his meetings).

        Or, at the end of the (unhelpful) information they’ve shared, you can state what you need to do and how you will be acting (or not acting) on it.

        In this case, you could respond “okay sounds good Brian. I’m booking the boardroom this afternoon, so let me know if you do end up having that meeting”.

        Or with the number of teapots “Okay sounds good – I won’t be ordering anything until I get a definitive number from you. I know they need those teapots for that presentation next week, so please let me know ASAP or they won’t have what they need”.

      2. Kevin Sours*

        In some cases. But questions like the first one have the problem that the person being asked has to guess at the information being requested. It really isn’t clear. If Bill had answered “yes” that’s a perfectly correct answer but not particularly useful. Because whether or not Bill has meetings scheduled is by itself of little relevance to a coworker. Bill has to guess whether he’s being asked about his availability, the availability of his office or the conference room he typically uses for some other purpose, or if somebody is just making small talk.

        Taking a moment to focus on “what information am I trying to get” trying to rephrase the question to include that directly is useful even if it’s not trivial for everyone to do.

      3. Chelle*

        Yeah, I have the same diagnosis as OP and I used to struggle with this but have actually turned it into a skill! I’m very good at hearing a response and reverse-engineering the question they thought they were answering with that, which I often restate as part of my response. Like this:

        Me: Do you want this report sorted by amount due by default?
        Waukeen: My team needs to be able to sort by lots of different things depending on what they’re doing.
        Me: Gotcha — we’ll make sure they have access to change the sort. Is amount due a good default though, or would something else be more appropriate?

        I have found that people sometimes get stuck on the information they shared, and if you just re-ask the same question, it can feel to them like you’re not hearing them. If you re-state their info, they feel understood and have an easier time moving on to your original question. It helps that in my line of work that additional info is usually also useful, even if it wasn’t the specific thing we were asking right now

        1. WindmillArms*

          This is a good one! My job is basically to pull information out of people’s heads and make it understandable to a third party, so this is what I tend to do. I used to get very irritated by the “off topic”/”non-answer” stuff, but I now use it as a clue that either my question was not precise enough and/or that I should check if the person is giving me extra useful information. Your example there is pretty accurate! Sometimes the person not giving me an expected answer to “X or Y?” means the question is more complex than I thought and I need to ask more.

      4. JHunz*

        But in those situations, the recipient of the question often equally needs to know the context of why you are asking to give you a useful response.

    9. Lenora Rose*

      This makes sense with the first question (It’s a little too open-ended), but the second one WAS the question she needed. “We’re still ordering five teapots, right?” followed by “But how many teapots should I order now?” And it still got nowhere.

    10. Sleeve McQueen*

      I’ve trained myself to ask for the information I need. “I’m hunting for a meeting room at 3 p.m. Are you using this one?” It’s easier for people to hit a target if they know where it is.
      If you provide a small amount of context on why this, it may also prompt them to furnish you with helpful information: yes I am but so and so just cancelled this other meeting, freeing up that one or actually I can use a smaller room so I will use this other one.

    11. LL*

      Yes, this! I don’t actually think the first two examples are THAT egregious. Sure, they didn’t answer directly, but for the first one, maybe the person only had the one meeting, so by saying it was canceled, they were saying “no, I don’t have any meetings.” But they had no idea why OP was asking that, so they then went on a rant related to meetings. Basically, neither OP nor the person answering were clear and the solution is to just outright ask what you need to know rather than asking leadup questions.

      I sometimes will ask leadup questions and then get frustrated when the conversation doesn’t go the way I was expecting, but that’s because I didn’t outright ask what I needed to know.

  2. Southern Gentleman*

    I’m sorry, LW. How did you get inside my head and write this letter for me? (This does not require an answer). You are not alone!

    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      Yeah, I’m not diagnosed anything and all of these situations would have driven me up the wall.

      1. CanadaGoose*

        I’m self-identified as having similar issues as the letter-writer, and I appreciate both the question and Alison’s reply! Agreed that stating the context or ‘why’ up front gets results more often. Close-ended questions are also more likely to get a useful response than open-ended. Eg. Email “Hey Scott, can I get your approval of this teapot order?” (Details already filled in) Vs “How many teapots do you think we might need in the future?”

      2. Jinni*

        This ^^^ A friend and I go over these situations ALL THE TIME. People say we’re rude for asking questions with nothing else around it (niceties), but it’s often the only way to get an answer. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re women, or because people aren’t direct – but this happens all the time to me and I’m not diagnosed with anything or neurospicy in any way.

        1. Saw Palmetto*

          I can’t speak to the female experience here, but directness versus evasiveness is highly culturally dependent (I worked for a Dutch company, and they consider it rude to obfuscate) so the second is certainly true in the states.

      3. Lacey*

        Same. I’m pretty neuro-typical, but I’m bad with putting fluffy stuff into work conversations to soften everything up and it’s often hard to cut through it to get the information I need.

        I agree with an early comment that suggested OP could try a different framing for the question, but I find these kinds of responses still happen when the question is very direct.

        “What size do we need this in?”
        “Well, we’re only doing a one day program, so we’ve already run newspaper ads in the Sun times and Chronical, now we’re trying to run a follow up ad”
        “Mkay. And what size would you like to run that ad at?”
        “We need to get it out tomorrow”
        “Yes. And what size do we need it to be?”
        “Bobby wants it to be flame red”
        “Ok, but what size?”
        “Oh, you know, regular”

        1. Admin of Sys*

          I find shifting the question works well with these types of folks – make it: ‘do you know what size we need this in?’ Sometimes, they’ll go ‘yes’ and then stop, and then you need to figure out how to say ‘then tell me please’ without sounding rightfully annoyed, but most of the time people /love/ to inform you of knowledge they have and you don’t.

        2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          I’m also a woman and have been accused- maybe even today- of being abrupt and rude and yes, I can be. But what you’re describing isn’t “fluff” in a conversation. The other person is being evasive and needs to just pony up the answer. If they’re talking it out and keeping on topic of the size, that’s one thing, but if they’re going off on tangents unrelated to what you’re asking, that’s just obnoxious and they need to be redirected back to the topic.

          If the conversation went something like this, it’d be different:

          You: What size do we need this in?
          Them: I’m not sure- what sizes have we used in the past?
          You: 5×7 and 8×11.
          Them: Is that for both the Sun Times and the Chronicle?
          You: We can do either size for either paper.
          Them: Would adding the color red affect the price significantly between the two sizes and papers?
          You: Yes, 8×11 would be X more expensive. The price is comparable between papers.
          Them: We definitely need to have it in red and be under X budget, so do 5×7. Run it in the Sun Times- we get more ROI from them.

          It would debate them back and forth, but you’d both be providing info and come to a clear conclusion. If the conversation is going all over the place, that isn’t helpful.

          1. Kevin Sours*

            Sometimes it’s not just about getting the information but getting sufficient *authorization*. And it can be a pain when for whatever reason people are allergic to making clear statements for the record (and I’ve run into it in cases where I’m pretty sure that the person *wasn’t* trying to dodge responsibility) but you really need them to say it so that you are covered if things go sideway.

            1. Great Frogs of Literature*

              Thankfully, my org has a culture where putting the decision in writing is very normal, so I can just ask, “Could you please put that in the chat for the record?” or “Would you mind adding a comment to the item to that effect?” or “In the meeting today we discussed XYZ; @boss please approve.” And for people who are bad at that sort of follow up, “@grandboss said X” and I figure I notified him that I was writing it down, and he didn’t argue with me.

            2. Jane*

              This exactly – with this particular example scenario, of what size ad and what newspaper, the (imagined) back and forth around it strikes me as having a subtext of trying to figure out who has the actual authority such that what THEY want will be the decision. And if it ends up being a joint decision, I think the back and forth is actually valuable for gauging who has opinions and why they should be considered.

    2. Aggretsuko*

      This sounds like pretty typical stuff to me. I end up just having to ask the same thing over and over and over and over again sometimes, I still may not get an answer then either.

    3. Salsa Verde*

      The description of being overwhelmed by the word salad that comes out was spot-on!!
      I feel like I can name specific people that this has happened with, so maybe it’s just a mis-match of neurodivergent qualities – I don’t have this problem with everyone.

      But sometimes I’ll ask what I thought was a simple, clarifying question, and instead of clarifying the one step that my question was about, they will start at the top and describe the entire process, only adding MORE irrelevant information. I find my mind wandering so much, and then I catch myself and try to start listening extra hard for any information that might give me the answer I’m looking for, and it usually doesn’t work. So frustrating!

      Sometimes I tell people to treat me like a courtroom or a flight attendant, because I need a clear, verbal yes or no.

    4. Bunny Girl*

      Yes! I’ve known a few people like this. You ask them a yes or no question and get a monologue. It’s very unhelpful.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I once asked someone why their organization did a certain process, and he answered, “Explaining that would be like trying to tell you why a drop of water flows down a mountain.”

        I still have no idea what he meant by that, but I strongly suspect he didn’t actually know the answer.

          1. Jane*

            Lol! I suppose my interpretation of his statement would be something like “we just DO, it doesn’t make sense to me either, and this is just the tip of the iceberg of weird inexplicable decisions made by our organization.”

      2. Wayward Sun*

        I was sort of raised to feel like I can’t say “no” to a request without justifying my refusal, especially in a work environment, so I’ll often answer yes/no questions with a lot of explanation.

      3. MsSolo (UK)*

        This is conversations with my mother – it’s also why some of the conversation about it being quicker to get an answer by telephone than text in a recent post made me laugh, because my mum absolutely wants to give you the whole context for every decision and all of the alternatives, even the non-viable ones, and relitigate the whole thing, when the actual question was “do you want a medium or large pizza?” And if you text, you just get 18 voice notes describing the whole menu, menus from other restaurants that aren’t currently open, one time getting a large pizza was a bad idea and another time getting a medium pizza was, and have to listen to all of them to figure out if she ever answered the question.

      4. Irish Teacher.*

        I worked for a guy like this. And it got very frustrating. When I started in the school, I asked him where a particular classroom was and got a long ramble about how the school was expanding and they were going to build on a whole load of classrooms and the one I was looking for was in the prefabs which were only temporary and they would be replacing them with…

        All well and good, but…I still don’t know how to get to the classroom where I have a class in like 2 minutes!

        Another teacher once said, “if you asked him to borrow his pen, you’d have to listen to a long ramble on something only vaguely related to the pen before he’d say yes or no.”

    5. Anteatertoo*

      I am not neurodivergent so forgive me if I’m not understanding. In the first instance, the OP asked a question that was very general – “do you have any meetings planned today?“ Sometimes people get their hackles raised if they’re being asked a question where they think there’s a question behind the question if you know what I mean. The OP might’ve followed up a question like “if you don’t have any meeting scheduled, can you do this onerous task that usually isn’t in your job description but we need someone to do it?“

      That’s not a great example but I think the challenge when you ask open-ended questions is that people might get defensive or start giving the word salad that you’ve described.

      1. londonedit*

        My mum is a terror for asking those open-ended questions with a hidden meaning behind them, and it can be annoying! Instead of saying ‘Would you mind driving me to the supermarket tomorrow morning? Dad’s car’s going in for a service’, she’ll say ‘Are you working tomorrow morning?’ and if I say yes, why, she’ll say ‘Oh, no, it’s fine if you’re working, don’t worry, it’s just that Dad’s car’s going in for a service, and I don’t know when it’ll be ready, and I’m just thinking that if it’s not ready by this afternoon then it’ll be really busy in town by the time I get to drive in, and…’. So what are you actually asking me, Mum? ‘Oh, well, I was going to ask if you wouldn’t mind driving me to the supermarket, but you’re working, so…’. And then I say well no, I can’t drive you, but why don’t you just use my car, it’s fine. If she’d started the conversation with ‘I don’t suppose you’d be able to drive me to the supermarket this morning, would you?’ then we’d have saved so much effort!

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        I think you’ve pinpointed one of the differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent conversation styles. Neurotypical people often ask questions with another meaning behind them and they certainly assume that any questions they are asked have another meaning whereas neurodivergent people often just…mean what they say.

        So a neurodivergent person asks “have you any meeting today?” and just wants to know…if you have any meetings today, but the neurotypical person hears, “are you available to do a task?” or “are you busy today?” and responds with that assumption in mind, perhaps asking, “what do you need?” and the first person is completely confused because they don’t need anything and don’t know why the other is assuming they do.

        It can get confusing the other way too, when the neurotypical person asks if the neurodivergent person has any meetings and is completely confused when the other just says “yes.” (And now I am remember an interview with de Valera, an Irish political leader who was likely autistic, where the interviewer said, “I’m sure you have some very happy memories of your schooldays?” presumably meaning it as a prompt for de Valera to respond with some of those memories, but instead de Valera just responded, “well, I supposed like most school boys, some were happy and some were not so happy.” With no further detail.)

        I think there probably needs to be more awareness on both sides and for it to be seen as just different communication styles.

        1. JB*

          This is silly.

          First of all, not all neurodivergent people have the same communication style. Not even all people with the same diagnosis have the same troubles with communication. As an autistic person, I can tell you definitively that there’s a pretty distinct divide between two or three “typical” autistic communication styles that can make it difficult for people within the community to communicate with each other – and individuals obviously vary within those styles. That’s not even touching people with PDD-NOS, who tend to have distinct challenges with communication and understanding that are very different from what both autistic and ADHD individuals experience.

          Second of all, your communication style should always be partly informed by context. If you are communicating at home the exact same way you communicate at work, that implies there is something you need to work on.

          And finally, I simply do not believe that any of the examples provided in the letter are communication style differences. If LW only accepts “yes” or “no” as an answer and does not hear when people give the answer another way – to the point where she transcribed examples in which two of the three “unanswered questions” definitely were answered and she apparently does not realize that – that’s a comprehension problem, not a communication style.

          If you ask “do you have any meetings today” and the other person answers “I did have one but it was cancelled”, you do need to be able to conclude from that that they are saying “no” and offering additional information along with it.

        2. Don P.*

          I realize these are arbitrary examples, but nobody, not even the neurodivergent, asks “do you have any meetings today” for no reason besides curiosity, as your example suggests.

    6. Ally McBeal*

      Reading those conversations reminds me of any Congressional hearing that’s taken place over the last ten years. Word salad that doesn’t actually answer the question. At least no one’s saying “I don’t recall”!

  3. Statler von Waldorf*

    The golden rule for not being seen at snarky is never letting your frustration show.

    So even if you have multiple people calling you a liar, you are not allowed to be frustrated by this. You must remain perfectly calm and polite, no matter what provocation you are given.

    It’s not fair. That’s life for you.

    1. Ms. Eleanous*

      golden rule for not being seen at snarky is never letting your frustration show.

      Saving this one!

    2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      The liar part seems like a you thing, since that’s not in the letter. But I’d point out there is a difference between *being* frustrated and *showing* you are frustrated.

      Nobody can stop you from having feelings. But you are usually expected to handle your feelings to seem polite instead of lashing out. They aren’t supposed to know you are having feelings.

    3. Starbuck*

      Sometimes when I want to show frustration at someone being unreasonable, I use surprise instead. It communicates a lot of the same message without being read as hostile/angry. Tone is key. A gentle “oh, wow, it sounds like you are saying I’m lying – that’s a serious thing to say to someone and I don’t think that’s true.”

  4. CubeFarmer*

    My husband does this sometimes. He rambles on about things adjacent to my question, without actually answering my question. What works for me is to stay focused on the question and if I detect a veering off, redirect the conversation, “Oh, uh, hold that thought. I need to know about teapots. How many do you need?”

    1. LadyMTL*

      I do something similar, in that I try to redirect the conversation / end the conversation by bringing it back on topic. So for example with #2 I would have said “Now that we agree that chamomile tea sucks, I’ll order those 5 teapots. If you need to change the amount, let me know” and #3 would have been “To make sure I’m understanding things, you’re confirming that the onboarding package wasn’t sent to Peter.”

      It’s not perfect, and I’m sure someone somewhere could find me rude, but it does seem to help.

    3. Snoozing not schmoozing*

      I worked with a verbal rambler who would give way too much detail in any reply. The rest of us started saying, “I asked you what time it is, not how to build a clock.” Once we got his mind corralled, he was excellent st explaining things, but it took a little patience to get there.

      1. cosmicgorilla*

        Snoozing not schmoozing, did we work with the same person? (joking)

        I once saw a project manager continuously herd my rambler back on path during a call. A nudge here, a nudge there, back to the main topic. It was glorious, and I want to learn her ways.

      2. Salsa Verde*

        I work with someone who tells people that he his former boss always said that to him (about time vs. clock building), and then he goes on to give too much detail anyway!!!

      3. MigraineMonth*

        I’ve noticed that my fellow tech people frequently give way more detail that matters to them than is needed while omitting the detail that matters to the decision-makers. (For example, the end-user doesn’t care whether the large text field is stored as a varchar or text in the database, but they do care whether it is searchable.) I tend to be better at perspective-taking so I usually add on the detail I think is important.

        A couple of times, though, others on my team start in on the technical detail and, sensing their audience doesn’t understand, *double down* and explain more and more until I interrupt them. It feels so rude, but I’ve actually gotten chat messages afterwards saying, “Thank you, I didn’t know how to stop!”

    4. Jackalope*

      I’ve also had luck in conversations where I can’t pin the person down with just telling them my judgment call: “Okay, sounds like there are no issues with 5 teapots, so that’s what I’m ordering.” Then if they don’t object, go with that. Obviously this doesn’t always work, but sometimes people just want you to make a decision.

      1. lunchtime caller*

        I think part of the problem might be that OP is not good at naming those kinds of judgments or does not feel empowered to do so. So while we would make a reasonable assumption to us based on the info given, OP feels like all they’ve received is completely unrelated info.

      2. Turquoisecow*

        Yeah and sometimes if you tell them your conclusion, they realize they weren’t clear.

        “Okay, so I’ll order 5 teapots like last time.”

        “Oh no! We ran out, this time we need ten!”

        “Okay, so I’ll order ten. Thanks.”

    5. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

      My husband and I both have ADHD, but it manifests in very different ways and we have this problem a lot, lol. His ADHD means that if you have a question for him his brain really has to go through all the background and context. Meanwhile my flavor of ADHD means that my brain loses track before he gets to the answer. We deal with this by me waiting for a quick pause and saying “I’ll let you get to the context, but so I have a frame of reference, can you give me the tl;dr to X and then the details after?”

      I wouldn’t use the phrase “the tl;dr” with a colleague unless we were friends, but I wonder whether the workaround could be adapted for the workplace.

      1. Lilian Field*

        This strategy is great. I have autism and auditory processing trouble, rather than ADHD, but I agree that it’s super-helpful to know how to pause or cut off a tangent politely. I have a friend who says, “Let’s put a pin in that,” a lot, and it’s helpful in cases like this one too–you can say something like, “Bob, that’s really helpful, and could we put a pin in it for a second? Do you have any meetings scheduled for this afternoon?”

      2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        My husband’s ADD manifests in him answering in such a way you can’t tell if he is agreeing or disagreeing or off topic entirely. In his own head, he’ll get to that at the end (fun trivia: the end often never comes), but I need to hear yes or no first so I can even follow the point he is making. It’s really a challenge.

    6. Zona the Great*

      Once my partner asked if I minded if he finished all the milk by asking if I had an cereal left. No, I said, but I did have some granola he can have. He looked at me like I was crazy, I returned the look, and it turns out his question was about milk and had nothing to do with cereal. It was….odd.

      1. Yes Anastasia*

        This is all too familiar – I’m a reference librarian, and 75% of my interactions are people asking about cereal when they really want milk.

        1. What name did I use last time?*

          Ah, the “reference interview,” where you ask polite questions and desperately try to figure out what the patron is actually looking for.

    7. JMU*

      My default strategy (at work), assuming there is no hard time constraint (e.g. five minutes of meeting left with more ground to cover) is to let them ramble. Then I smile and/or shake my head and say “sorry, I am not sure I understood / I lost focus for a moment / I must be stupid but I did not get it. How many teapots should I buy?” Repeat once if necessary.

      You see, it’s not you rambling when I ask a clear question. It’s me, not following your brilliant train of thought, and needing the information spoon-fed to me.

      (Warning: I have a skin color, gender, degree, etc. such that when I say “I must be stupid”, nobody remembers it five minutes later. Less fortunate people might need a rephrasing.)

  5. Consonance*

    When people start going on about various gripes, etc. like in the example about meetings, you might also try: “Agreed! Let’s put a pin in that for the moment, though. Do you have time at 3 today?” That can help the person feel “heard” but still get on to the actual answer you need. In other situations you can say something like, “Yeah that’s a lot going on. Just to make sure I get the right info, it sounds like 5 is okay right now?” Again, validating what they said, returning to the question. I think this often works best with a dose of humility that implies that you need their assistance in summarizing or getting down to the literal answer. “There’s definitely a lot we could get into on that front! I’m not sure I understood, though. Five teapots today?”

    1. Shipbuilding Techniques*

      Somewhere over the years the phrase “let’s put a pin in that” has acquired a condescending, negative connotation, at least in my workplace. Maybe because of the particular people who use it. And that the pins are never returned to, ever. For this reason, though, I personally would never use this phrase unless I were willing to be thought snarky.

      1. dulcinea47*

        We’ve all been taught to use that phrase whenever someone brings up something off topic in a meeting. People know they’re being put off and don’t like it.

      2. Consonance*

        My guess is that this is very dependent on the individual situation/setting/culture. I don’t use it in the way you’ve mentioned, nor how dulcinea47 mentioned. I use it more as “We’re at the end of our allotted time but I want to make sure we’re coming back to this later, not just cutting someone off in the middle of a thought.” I imagine the use and impact also depends on tone of voice and the individual saying it.

  6. juliebulie*

    OP, there is ADHD, and there is auditory processing disorder, and then there are people who for whatever reason (there could be many) cannot ever seem to answer a single question.

    I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was 40, and let me tell you it explained a lot. If anything, the diagnosis made it so much clearer that I was not always the problem when I had an unsatisfactory conversation.

    I have struggled with the urge to tell people, “but this was a yes or no question, where is your answer?” If it’s in writing, what I actually do is briefly (very briefly) acknowledge whatever rambly thing they told me and then ask the question again in a slightly different way.

    If it’s a spoken conversation, I just ask, “so, yes or no?” And sometimes I get something that’s a little closer to being an answer.

    One thing I have found, though, is that it helps if your question is short. Sometimes the question is actually rather complicated, so then it is a series of short yes/no questions to lay out what I’m looking for. If I try to explain all the nuances up front, I’m going to lose their attention.

    Bottom line is that it just takes a lot of work with some people. Pretend that you don’t find anything annoying about having to ask the same question multiple times. In fact, pretend that you’re asking for the first time, every time.

    1. Anonym*

      Yeah, OP, this is not a you problem. You have to deal with it, unfortunately, and your diagnoses may make it extra hard to parse the wall of nonsense you receive from certain people, but this is *them* not communicating very well. Which is common! But very aggravating for anyone who’s just looking for the answer to a question.

      I second the re-asking. Some pleasant, minimal acknowledgement of what they said, then ask your question again, slightly more specifically if possible.

      1. Joana*

        Indeed. People are just like this. As someone with a similar diagnosis, I realized when I got it that it was likely the reason I just couldn’t understand why people did this, but it’s not a me problem that they do (even if it comes down to that I need to redirect them when they should know to communicate clearly).

      2. ecnaseener*

        Eh, I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to frame this entirely as the other person’s fault. In each of these conversations, it reads to me like the other person is trying to be helpful based on their best guess at what LW needs to know, but they’re not mind-readers. Bill thinks LW is either just making conversation or asking if he has the bandwidth for more meetings. Peter doesn’t know the answer and doesn’t want to just blithely give a number that might be wrong, so he explains what’s been discussed so far. Michael is explaining that he doesn’t do this for NJ employees and what the process is for them.

        In short, none of these guys are giving a “wall of nonsense” or being terrible at communicating – they could be better at it, but so could LW.

        I think everyone on the planet has at some point thought “I’m always clear so MY communication style must be the best one, why isn’t everyone else as clear as me?” – and we’re all wrong, we can all stand to tweak our approach to meet other people where they’re at.

        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          Yes! We once had an icebreaker question at work that was “you get one superpower, but you can only use it at work. what do you pick?” A coworker said “the ability to know the purpose behind questions and answers” and I thought that was brilliant, because none of us are perfect at clarity.

          1. Anony rn*

            Oh, absolutely and what a great wish. I worked in a call center for a while and over time definitely got better at narrowing down my questions when helping customers, some of which described their issue truly in the vaguest of terms only.
            Approaching it from the angle that they were explaining things to the best of their ability and might also deal with additional stuff that takes up bandwidth, I certainly got a lot farther than getting frustrated with them for not starting things perfectly on the first try.

        2. Saturday*

          Exactly – thank you for saying this. The coworkers’ responses were characterized as a “word salad,” but that would mean they’re responding with gibberish, and that’s not really what’s happening. Agree Bill is probably not clear on what’s being asked, and Peter is indicating it’s not a simple question and telling why.

          Not saying either approached this perfectly or anything, but I’ve often been asked a question and given a simple answer only to find out that there was a bunch of context I would have provided if I knew how my response was going to be used. So sometimes I provide extra context that wasn’t explicitly asked for, but I think the advice to explain why the question is being asked is really important.

        3. Sloanicota*

          Yeah I must be in the minority, I didn’t think these answers were that complicated. Bill is free, Peter doesn’t know, Michael didn’t do it. Those are the answers.

        4. tiny potato*

          “In each of these conversations, it reads to me like the other person is trying to be helpful based on their best guess at what LW needs to know, but they’re not mind-readers.”

          — but then, as you go on to note, they still try to read LW’s mind rather than answering the question they were asked.

          1. Allonge*

            Yes, that is how human communication works. Most people, when faced with a question, will try their best to give a relevant answer to the question as they understand it.

            What is the alternative? Asking back ‘are you sure this is what you want to know’ is pretty rude. There are fairly strong cultural taboos to saying ‘I don’t know’. MOst people want to be helpful. Most people expect that if your question is not answered, you will ask follow-up questions.

            1. amoeba*

              Errr, really? Maybe that’s a cultural difference (I’m German, so, you know… we’re not exactly known to be subtle!) but it would never occur to me to try and second-guess what people are aiming at when they ask me something. I’ll just… answer the question and if that doesn’t get them where they need to be, they’ll follow up! Or if I’m unclear about why they ask, I’ll just ask them in turn…

              So for the first one, I’m pretty sure I (and honestly, most/all of my colleagues) would reply “don’t think so/a few this afternoon/not sure/yes, a ton – why do you ask?”

              1. Allonge*

                Most likely I did not phrase it right as a lot of people did not get what I was trying to say, but yes, communication works like this:

                X has a communication objective in their mind
                X says words out loud
                Y hears the words
                Y’s brain translates the words into meaning
                Y forms a response based on that meaning
                Y says words to translate that response into something X can hear
                and so on.

                So my point is not that people intentionally seek second meanings or background hidden information and answer the wrong question, it’s that what X’ brain contains does not match exactly the words X says, and even if Y hears every word X says crystal clear and has a full understanding of all the words the exact same as X, the meaning Y’s brain gives to the words will very often not match the original communication intention of X. This is not just because some people are neurodiverse, this is literally everyone.

            2. tiny potato*

              I mean, plainly that’s not how “human communication” works, since the LW is a human and she’s off-put by it, and so are a lot of people in this very thread.

              1. bel*

                Sometimes those of us who are neurodivergent have issues with communication. It’s what gets a lot of us into a diagnostic process in the first place, and we discover that we have basic things to learn.

                One of them, for me, was asking clearer questions.

            3. Irish Teacher.*

              I think the alternative would be to answer what the other person actually asked rather than trying to guess at what they mean. It seems like often people don’t listen and just make a guess at what they expect the person would ask and answer that rather than…answering what the other person actually says.

              If one tries to guess the motivation for asking a question and answer based on that, one is likely to be wrong much, if not most of the time. Given that they aren’t mind readers, it’s pointless for them to make a “best guess at what the LW needs to know.” They can’t really know that but they do know what she has asked and can answer that.

              If somebody asks “do you have any meetings today?” the possible answers are “yes, I have a meeting at X time,” “yes, I have meetings at whatever times” or “no, I don’t have any meetings.”

              I know people are trying to be helpful when they guess at what you want to know and try to skip a few steps and give you more information than you have asked for and…on the odd occasion when they are correct, yeah, I guess it is, but in the many cases where they are incorrect, it’s really frustration.

              And there is an easy alternative, to just…answer the question asked and not worry about giving the information you think they might ask for afterwards.

              1. Allonge*

                Ok but the ‘question that was asked’ is filtered into the recipient’s brain via a thousand layers of cultural, linguistic, historical, personal processing.

                If I ask ‘where did you get those shoes’, it will have a totally different meaning to someone who has been accused of stealing other people’s shoes before than to a shoe designer.

                ‘Do you have a meeting this afternoon’ can be answered with yes or no, sure. (I would argue that ‘I had one but it’s cancelled’ is a pretty clear no.) But that information is pretty unlikely to be useful without further context, so people will think it can mean ‘can you cover for me’ ‘will you have time to finish X project’ ‘can I use the meeting room’ ‘can we have a meeting’ ‘can you tell [person your meetings are usually with] something’ etc. Or ‘hey, how is it going’.

                So answering the question as asked sounds easy in principle, it’s not how it works in practice because the askee’s brain hears something and interprets that and the interpretation very often will not match what the asker intended. Case in point, OP’s conversations.

                1. Allonge*

                  And since I am still not sure how clear I am being (another case in point) – look up Shannon–Weaver model of communication, that is what I am talking about.

            4. aebhel*

              That is how a very particularly socialized style of human communication works, and it’s obnoxious to posit it as the universally correct one when it is, in many cases, clearly not actually working.

            5. Morgan*

              Most people, when faced with a question, will try their best to give a relevant answer to the question as they understand it.

              But that’s exactly what tiny potato doesn’t think they were doing here – or rather, they were weighting “as they understand it” above “relevant answer to the question”.

              The first and most obvious alternative would be to ask clarifying questions, most especially if you do start getting follow-up questions that don’t fit the model you initially had for why the first question was asked.

              Sometimes trying to be “helpful” is actively counterproductive, when you’re injecting your own assumptions into a process and the other party has no idea what they are. Yes, many people will often answer what they think a question is really asking, without recognizing that it isn’t what was literally asked or the only or most plausible possible reason for the question… and when they do that, especially when they keep trying to work from that mistaken assumption without recognizing it, pausing, and checking it, that’s them failing to communicate clearly.

      3. Temperance*

        I don’t think this is accurate. I don’t see context as a “wall of nonsense” or “word salad”.

    2. MicroManagered*

      If anything, the diagnosis made it so much clearer that I was not always the problem when I had an unsatisfactory conversation.

      I was diagnosed about 8 months ago, at 43, and this piece is so important. It also takes time and will get better with time!

      Working with an ADHD-informed therapist has been incredibly helpful when it comes to sorting through this kind of stuff. We talk about which part is ADHD symptoms that I’m just now understanding I have, which part is trauma responses from childhood abuse, and which part is “I’m not even the problem at all here.”

      If I try to explain all the nuances up front, I’m going to lose their attention.

      This is something I’m working on. I am often impatient when I ask someone a question and they give me multiple responses that don’t answer the question. Sometimes the person is being legitimately frustrating, like the examples in this letter! But also sometimes I’m forgetting that, I’ve already processed this question 4-5x before I ever said it to them — I already understand the nuances, but they don’t. I try to remind myself to be patient when that’s happening, like internally I’m thinking *she’s still processing the question, let her think, I’ve already thought through it.*

    3. aebhel*

      Yeah, I think there’s an instinct for a lot of ND people to always assume that we’re the problem in any communication failure, but that’s not necessarily the case.

    4. RagingADHD*

      It also helps to “lampshade” things. So if you have a complicated question, start by saying, “Hey, I have a complicated question with a lot of moving parts – can you help me with this?”

      Same with “Hey, I need to talk to you about something awkward, do you have a minute?”

      or “Can I pick your brain / get your expertise on something? I need some clarity on X.”

      By announcing what you’re trying to do and getting buy-in, people are more likely to really listen to your question and think about their answer instead of rambling or misinterpreting your question as chitchat.

  7. Laggy Lu*

    Something else I see in 1 & 2 are people potentially trying to draw OP into the conversation or decision. Bill Turned his answer into a vent, while Peter went on a tangent about to decide how many teapots should be ordered. I assume it’s not OP’s job to either schedule meetings for/with Bill or to provide input on teapot orders. I can totally see how this extraneous info is annoying and downright derailing for someone in OPs shoes.
    Allison’s advice is great because it doesn’t require OP to change anything about what the coworkers are doing, just learn to puck through it, or use other tactics to get around the noise.

    1. MusicWithRocksIn*

      I think it’s more that the person is trying to lay down hints for the OP. I saw #1 as ‘please don’t schedule a meeting with me today, there have been too many, can we please cut down” and number 2 as “I don’t know yet, I’m still trying to work it out”.

      1. commensally*

        Yeah, all three of those read to me as the other person not having a good answer, and trying to avoid saying that (which is something I get a lot in IT work and is very frustrating.)

        1. Is saying “I can’t take any more meetings please don’t try to schedule me one”

        2. Is saying “I can’t get a straight answer on how many teapots we need either”

        3. Is saying “No I didn’t send that packet but I don’t want to sound like I’m slacking off on it”

        The conversations are likely becoming rambly and annoying to both participants because OP isn’t picking up on the hints and they don’t know what to follow up with when that doesn’t happen.

        OP is interpreting people trying to talk around the real answer as word salad when it’s not meaningless chatter, it’s people not being willing to say an uncomfortable/risky thing out right. (The number of times I have had to chase someone down after weeks of this stuff to get someone to just say “yes, that is broken, and no, we can’t fix it” is innumerable.)

        1. sb51*

          Or for the “vent-y” one, trying to commiserate/build human relationships.

          The problem for the LW (which I share) is that with audio processing issues, processing the real-time audio can take up all of one’s brain bandwidth — leaving none for parsing out the social niceties.

          (It sounds like the LW is struggling a little with actually parsing the social/hinting niceties even without the audio piece, with that text conversation, but I’ve definitely had conversations that, if I could watch with captions/rewind/replay on, would have gone very smoothly, but since I was having so much trouble turning noise into words, I missed a social cue I’d have normally caught.)

        2. Pomodoro Sauce*

          Yeah, it can help to remove the consequences for directly admitting that the answer could be “I can’t meet today unless it’s extremely important” or “I don’t know how many teapots to order” or “I didn’t send the packet” — I want to know when people are just treading water at work, feel uninformed about how to do their jobs, or didn’t realize a task was a necessary part of the process.

          It’s less “word salad” and more “I am uncomfortable not providing the answer that you want to hear.” I’d think about whether that’s a workplace culture issue, or a OP issue.

          1. commensally*

            Yeah, it’s also a very different experience here depending if LW has authority over the speaker. A boss waffling because they don’t want to admit something allows very different responses than a supervisee or colleague doing it.

        3. Saturday*

          And with #3, I also think he’s providing extra information he thinks could be useful to OP.

        4. Wayward Sun*

          As an IT person, we get in trouble when we’re seen as just a “no” department. So I almost never directly say “no” without lots of context or offering an alternative.

          1. commensally*

            As a person who does a lot of dealing with IT (I learned how to talk to them so everyone makes me their point person) – it’s much, much better to be known as the “No, but we wish it could be yes too, here’s what the obstacle is” department than the “treat everyone like mushrooms fed bullshit and kept in the dark” department. Ours was the second until that resulted in so little voluntary communication both ways that we had a major cybersecurity incident and all the IT leadership got fired. The other way is much better all around – and it sounds like that’s what you’re doing, mostly, so good. But you need to get the “no” in there first if it’s actually a no or people will just be irritated at being strung along.

      2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        Interesting. I read Number 1 as “Yes, I am free because my other meeting was canceled” and Number 2 as “You’ve hit on a pet peeve and I will not answer you as I re-argue my point with other colleague who is not even here”.

  8. Post-It Note Girlie*

    For in-person convos, would it be possible to write down your question before going to talk to someone? I.e. write a post-it to yourself “Ask Bill – meetings today?” or “Ask Peter – number of teapots?” so you can have that visible reminder for yourself.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I don’t think the issue is that they forget. The issue is they don’t get a clear answer and then the other person side tracks the conversation with unnecessary info.

      1. Charlie*

        It sounds like all the side tracking does cause them to forget – at least temporarily. There’s just too much verbal information to process, and only once OP has done that, do they later realise they didn’t actually get an answer.

        I think the post-it idea may work in several ways. It will keep the actual question clear in OP’s mind. It will also send out a message to the other person that she’s there on business with a practical question (not a long chat) and needs to write down the answer on this post-it. And the other person might also see the question written down and be more likely to stay on track and provide a straight answer.

      2. Temperance*

        I don’t think that the answers are unclear, but OP isn’t asking the right questions to get what she wants OR the person with whom she’s speaking is providing additional context.

        For #3, she asked what she characterizes as a yes or no question, but the recipient obviously doesn’t agree. Saying “no” would make it look like he slacked off on a task, when it sounds like for procedural or other reasons, he doesn’t handle that task.

    2. Moths*

      I was coming here to say the same. That’s what I frequently do when I need to go ask someone a question in person. If I don’t have it written down in front of me, I’ll also get distracted by their tangents and never get an answer. Before I finish the conversation, I’ll check my note and if there’s anything remaining that we didn’t get the answer I need on, I’ll just say, “Oh, I wanted to circle back quickly to teapots. I need to place that order today. Did you want 5 or 8?” I live and die by my million post-it notes.

    3. Sloanicota*

      Number one is off to me. OP doesn’t want to know about Bill’s whole schedule, they want to schedule a specific thing. They need to start with this. Bill doesn’t even understand why she’s asking.

  9. Dust Bunny*

    I don’t think your ADHD is the problem here. The problem here is that you apparently work with caffeinated squirrels.

    When they get going on disagreements about how many teapots to order or whatever, it’s OK to say, OK, we should discuss that later, but I need to put the order in for this week–so how many? Sometimes you have to be a bit . . . not rude, but firm.

    1. Myrin*

      Yeah, I was actually surprised by the causation OP talks about here: “I have a hard time holding a lot of verbal information in my head. And this is why for my entire life I’ve been dealing with a communication problem” because… from the examples in the letter, it doesn’t sound like this is an ADHD problem and honestly not even like an OP problem (although I do like the suggestions Alison and others are making for changing up her approach a little).
      OP just seems to deal with a lot of people who ramble and go on tangents, which doesn’t have anything to do with her neurodivergence.

    2. Raia*

      The #2 conversation in particular feels like the -group of friends who don’t know where to eat- situation, where someone needs to just throw out any suggestion in order for decision-making to move forward. “How about 7 teapots then? You agree with 7 and then we’ll reevaluate next month? Great thanks.”

    3. Pomodoro Sauce*

      Similar kinds of neurodiversity often end up in similar fields.

      And it’s NO FUN being the assigned “has to meet neurotypical benchmarks” person!

      1. Tau*

        Yeah… I’m glad I don’t work with OP because I’m autistic + ADHD and one of the ways that manifests is that I tend to give lots of contextual information in all my answers. /o\ I have tried to get better at this and especially try to provide a tl;dr before I get into the detail but… often the tl;dr is “it’s complicated” and I *really* struggle to figure out which of the context I’m providing is inappropriate and which is OK. Luckily nobody has ever complained, and I’m in a technical role where a certain amount of this is sort of expected. But if one of my coworkers had a specific difficulty with processing and retaining that sort of verbal information… man, clash of the neuroatypicalities. We might actually have to handle this sort of thing by Slack.

      2. One Duck In A Row*

        A couple of years ago the team I’m on did some sort of training/bonding thing that was basically a personality test that those of us who are neurodivergent recognized as not sorting by personality types but by neurotypes. I don’t think it was meant to do that, and I know our employer is too earnest and disorganized to have meant to do that as some sort of sneaky diagnosis. So it ended up being this totally benign way for those of us who are somewhere on the AuDHD spectrum to “see” each other, in a rare moment of the neurodivergents understanding all of the subtext while the neurotypicals had no clue what the rest of us were seeing. So much eye contact as we recognized each other for who we were. The more I think about it, the more I love that glorious backwards-day activity.

        Anyway, it wasn’t a surprise that about 2/3 of us fell into groupings that clearly fit autism and/or ADHD traits, and the conversations that ensued about preferred communication styles, etc., really confirmed that regardless of formal diagnoses (I know nothing beyond my own for any of these co-workers), we all recognized each other as same or similar, and we all recognized that there is a reason why such a large percentage of the team is the way we are. Folks who like creating and working within systems, and finding new ways to use spreadsheets to tame the chaos? Folks who adore bullet lists in emails so everyone is clear on all points, which are plainly stated and organized and, Outlook gods willing, searchable later? Folks who want to just hide in their dark holes with their noise cancelling headphones blasting ambient music in their earholes so they can hyperfocus, but are people-pleasingly happy to be interrupted, if you can just email that request so we have a few minutes to transition between tasks? Oh boy do I love this about my co-workers.

        1. Carmina*

          Damn this sounds amazing! I have a neuroatypical diagnosis myself and, given the field I work in, I am pretty sure quite a few of my colleagues also do. But while I have been clocked a few times, I am terrible at spotting others! I wish I could.

      3. Irish Teacher.*

        And neurotypical people can also be at fault/be unclear/have trouble communicating.

        Not disagreeing with your point but just adding that not everybody who communicates poorly is neuroatypical.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          Yeah, my solidly NT mother is a communication disaster because she assumes that her ideas and preferences are both universal and obvious and consequently believes people should read her mind, so you get about 40% of the information you need and then a lot of impatience and pushback when you ask for more. I know plenty of ND adults who, because they have worked so hard at it all their lives, are excellent communicators.

      4. Gatomon*

        This was my exact thought. I am ADHD myself and have a LOT of coworkers who are some mix of ADHD and autistic, diagnosed and some I suspect are not. I really prefer asynchronous communication (email, IM) to synchronous (in person, phone) because it gives me a chance to review what I’m asking to see if it makes sense, and what I’m being asked to see if I’m answering the question.

        I guess my advice to OP would be to lay out the “why” in the initial message. If you need someone to meet with a client that afternoon, ask if Bob is available to meet with the client instead of asking if he has meetings. If you asked me if I had meetings I’d say yes, but I’d reschedule/cancel in order to fit a client in if they weren’t client meetings. That’s the context I need to know to answer properly and cut off my own tangents.

        Example: I had a junior coworker ask for help with some teapot configuration about 5 minutes before I had a meeting, so I suggested we talk after. Turns out it was an active customer issue, not a general question – if he’d made that clear I would’ve prioritized that over my attendance at the meeting!

  10. Ellis Bell*

    I have really similar issues and I find just reordering the words in your question and throwing in a few guesses at your answer usually does it. Also, when people don’t answer you, sometimes that means they don’t have an answer.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Oh and you can bring your to list to the person with the blank space you need filled highlighted: So your to do item would read “Order (?) teapots after speaking to Peter”. Get on the habit of not moving away until you’ve filed it in, and it has the advantage of you being able to gesture to it and say “So what am I putting down here, five?” If you get distracted by an additional issue, you can add it to the to do list: “Look into issues with Peppermint and Chamomile”.

    2. Sumana Harihareswara*

      Yes to that last observation! Many people find it emotionally difficult to say “I don’t know”. I blogged about the “people answering an adjacent question” phenomenon, what causes it, and how I try to mitigate it, and talked about this a bit.

      Sometimes we are averse to the humiliation of saying “I don’t know,” or the vulnerability of visibly pausing and thinking and demonstrating that our answer was not already ready. And so we kind of deploy a pre-prepared speech, or allow ourselves to go on, about an adjacent topic.

      To help these folks feel more okay about the interaction, I might use softening language in my follow-up, like, “Hey, so, actually I think maybe I wasn’t clear.” I’m offering them the option to save face by pretending that the error was mine.

      1. MusicWithRocksIn*

        I think #2 was definitely a ‘I don’t know, I’m really conflicted about this’ and the OP was not reading between the lines. Personally, I would have either said ‘Hey, we need to know by X, can you please let me know when you decide’ or ‘Lets go grab Garry and see if we can’t nail this down’.

      2. Sloanicota*

        Same with the final person. They don’t want to sound like a slacker by saying they didn’t do the onboarding. They want to seem like they generally have things under control. It may not actually be their job but saying that may seem rude to them.

    3. the *actual* peter gibbons.*

      Your last sentence really resonates with me. I think I work with a lot of people who are so insecure about not knowing the answer or having one, that they’d rather dream up 4-5 things to say instead of “I don’t know”. GOD. IT DRIVES. ME . MENTAL.

      I could have written in something akin to the OP’s letter, like, People waste my time with conversation when I just want a straight answer. I interpret many people’s long answers to, “I don’t know”, “I don’t have the answer”, “I don’t care”, “Not my job”, etc.

      I acknowledge that some people are just friendly ramblers, but I definitely think there’s some truth to the fact that there are some people who are terrified of saying “I don’t know.” the way that *I* try to answer this diplomatically is by saying “This is outside of my purview, but I can ask xyz to assist you”, etc.

      1. Annie*

        Even if you’re comfortable with saying variations of “I don’t know” that fit the context, it’s also common to be uncomfortable with providing an answer you’re not 100% sure on to avoid the embarrassment that comes with a wrong answer.

    4. juliebulie*

      Yes to the guessing. If you ask, they won’t have an answer – but if you guess wrong, they have something more concrete to work with.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        If I were unclear about an answer to someone’s question and they just guessed at what my answer would be instead of clarifying, my first thought upon getting the wrong info back would be, “Why didn’t they ask me if they didn’t know how to handle this?”

        1. lizard*

          I believe they’re suggesting to guess out loud in conversation; for example “how many teapots do we need, 15?” which then can prompt them to say “no, 15 is too many.” Not to just guess by yourself and act on your guess.

          1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

            That sounds worse- you’re delaying getting the answer you need and just opening up more speculation.

            1. Ellis Bell*

              It sounds like you’re talking about a situation where the answer is definitely coming, and coming quickly, not the type of situation where they aren’t telling you.

              1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

                Except apparently the LW does want a firm answer and the other person is just throwing out numbers and speculation and derailing the topic- why wouldn’t throwing out even more numbers lead to more speculation? The person is literally already doing that. It sounds like the LW would prefer a concise answer so that they know how to proceed, not a way to go off into more tangents.

                1. Ellis Bell*

                  No it wouldn’t be random; like you wouldn’t just blurt out bingo numbers. The person she was speaking to didn’t go for the suggestion of five, but mentioned 10 was too many. At this point, a guess between these two tent poles is begging to be made, but you need to explicitly prompt them to clarify as well: “So if five is not enough and ten is too many, would seven be enough in your opinion?” etc. However, I know some people are very uncomfortable with estimating, so in that situation; “If five is not enough, and ten is too many, how many is a good number?” would work just as well.

                2. Allonge*

                  LW is the one who needs to do something though.

                  If someone will not give me a specific answer but all the numbers we collectively mention are between 5 and 10, and we have budget for 7, I will suggest that we order 7 this time around and we if that works and add, is that ok?

                  A lot of people who are uncomfortable saying ‘order 8’ will be ok saying, ‘sure, let’s go with 7’, or at least something affirmative. I have my answer and can proceed.

        2. Lexi Vipond*

          But once you’ve told them maybe 5, or maybe 8, but maybe not 7, or maybe 10 but that’s definitely too many, at some point someone has to decide to put down 8 (even if that just prompts you to say no, lets get 10 and use any leftovers next month), and at that stage they’ve got little reason to believe it’s going to be you.

          If you object strongly to people making best guesses from your information, give them an answer or a time when you’ll be able to answer.

        3. Lisa*

          The strategy being suggested here is that guessing *within the context of the conversation* can help move the conversation forward when stuck. Like
          “So how many teapots should I order?”
          vs
          “So how many teapots should I order? 5? 10?”

          It’s a subtle difference, but it can help with *some* people who get stuck on the open-endedness of the first question.

        4. Lily Rowan*

          The guessing is part of the conversation, though: “blah blah blah…” “OK, so I’ll go with 8 – does that sound right?” “Oh no, definitely less than 8!” “So….7?” “Sure, 7 is good.”

      3. Ellis Bell*

        This reminds me of something new we’re doing in teaching with examples for students. In the past, we gave the kids WAGOLLS (what a good one looks like), but the kids are actually responding better to WABOLLS (What a bad one looks like). If you give someone a good example, they’ll just agree with it, copy it, or assume you know how to do things better than them. If you give them a bad one, they’ll realise they can do better, correct you much faster, and end up doing more thinking for themselves. Deploy what might come across as bad judgement with care though, obviously.

        1. juliebulie*

          Fascinating! Never heard it laid out like that before, but yes, that’s totally a thing.
          (Also, when are you going to write a sequel to Wuthering Heights? I’m WAITING!)

        2. metadata minion*

          I have a book on nature drawing that does this amazingly well. It has good examples of how *to* draw things, but then it has examples of common mistakes, like “look, the petals of this flower aren’t all pointing toward the center” or “don’t try to draw every single hair on an animal, it ends up looking weird rather than precise”. That’s way more helpful to me than accurate examples when I’m looking at something I’ve drawn and going “ok, I can tell that this is wrong, but not *why*”.

        4. N C Kiddle*

          When my kid was a toddler, she couldn’t understand “what animal is that?” I guess it was too abstract? If I wanted her to identify an animal, I had to point it out incorrectly. “Look at that dog.” “Silly mummy, that’s a cat.” And I think even adults find it easier to correct a wrong answer than answer an open ended question.

        5. Heffalump*

          WAGOLLS and WABOOLS–is this something you do in particular school subjects, or in teaching in general? This is something I’ve never heard of.

          1. Ellis Bell*

            It’s quite a new pedagogical approach, I recently heard it in a training session a few weeks ago. It was from a primary head teacher but you could use it in any subject or for any age.

  11. English Teacher*

    Yep, have this problem with people all the time and I’m neurotypical, as far as I know. I actually take the strategy of cultivating a little snarkiness, so that when I silently wait for them to finish their word-diarrhea and then repeat my same question word-for-word, people just think I’m being my hilarious self and not rude . Works at some workplaces, not others. But Alison has the right idea in just rewording the question with more specificity/explanation until you get your answer. You don’t need to pay a lot of attention to the word salad. A reasonable person will not fault you for not hearing 100% of it if you’re focused on something else.

    1. Charlie*

      The trouble is that neurodivergent people often have difficulty working out what is relevant from what is irrelevant. As a result, we have to listen to and process 100% of the words. Only after we’ve done that do we realise that we didn’t actually get the relevant information. It’s impossible to know you when can tune out, as you have to process it in order to know it’s irrelevant. Sometimes the relevant information comes sandwiched amongst the other stuff.

      1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

        Ironically, difficulty being able to tell the relevant from the irrelevant can also lead to being the one producing the long rambling response! This is the difficulty my husband and I (both ADHD) have: we both produce rambling overly-worded answers for each other *and* have difficulty parsing them from each other. It’s kind of funny when it’s not frustrating.

    2. TeaRex*

      Exactly. After their rambling subsides, a well-timed, “…so 5 teapots then?” usually gets a chuckle and a real answer.

      1. Saturday*

        I’d be careful with this one though – it could come across as mean if not done right.

  12. oaktree*

    I have way too many Peters in my work life. It’s a way of avoiding responsibility. If he just answers five, now he’s responsible if five was too many or not enough. If he goes through all the other crap without answering, he’s not responsible because he never told you to order five.

    1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      A tactic I’ve used before is saying “I’m going to do THIS on DATE unless you want me to do something else.” Like “I’m going to submit an order for five teapots on Friday afternoon, but let me know before then if you want a different number.”

      1. Joielle*

        Yep, this is the way. It’s a lot easier for someone to react to a decision than make a decision themselves, and then you have a specific time at which you are going to take a specific action.

        1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          It’s been successful every time I’ve done it. Though that’s only in circumstances where I have a good sense of what a reasonable option looks like. A variant is “We have these NUMBER options [DETAILS]. I’d recommend option NUMBER and will go with that on DATE unless you’d prefer a different option.”

          In circumstances where this doesn’t fit, like more guidance and direction are needed, I’d just note that we need a decision by DATE to avoid delays.

    2. Snarkus Aurelius*

      One of the worst bosses I ever had always talked out of both sides of her mouth. You could give her a binary choice, and she would praise and criticize both in the same conversation. Then if you made the decision, she would always criticize it and insist she never said that.

      I do not miss her.

    3. MsM*

      Eh, I’ve been in a lot of versions of the Peter conversation, and it’s remarkably difficult to get the people with the decision-making power to stop thinking through all the possible scenarios and just pick a number sometimes.

      1. amoeba*

        Sure, but I feel that there would be a much better way to approach this answer in Peter’s shoes – if you go “Actually, that’s so easy to answer, we need to factor in X, Y, and Z!” it makes much more sense than just to start rambling about X, Y, and Z. You could even throw in a “sorry I can’t just give you a number!”

        2. Allonge*

          Sure, but part of it is that the other person in the conversation has some power – can keep asking, can propose a number in the range being discussed, can ask if there will be more precise info coming later on etc.

          It’s a conversation between humans, not a human and a spits-out-answers robot.

    4. Seltzer Fiend*

      I am sometimes Peter, and it’s not malice! It’s mostly that I think through problems when I’m talking, and sometimes the conversation introduces new information which requires consideration and can greatly affect the answer (There is a, uh, strong chance I have ADHD. Linear thinking is not my strong suit) I’ve been told it’s unhelpful, and I try to rein it in whenever I can.

      If I screw it up, I 100% appreciate it when someone asks me to clarify! I probably thought I answered the question, or at least gave someone enough information to answer it themselves. I think if I were Peter in this situation, I’d probably have thought I told the OP we needed eight teapots, since 7 wasn’t enough and 10 is too many. And if the OP came back to me later that day and asked, “hey, you said eight teapots, right?” that would be appreciated, for sure.

      I work with another Benign Peter who is maybe less self-aware of this tendency…it definitely helps to write down what you need decided before you start the conversation with them so you can remember to loop back! Delightful person, though.

      And for OP — I tend to zone out in conversations, and have two pieces of advice that might be helpful:
      1) I always try to add something at the end of a conversation where I restate what I heard and what my action items are (and theirs if it’s polite/I’m in a position to do so) So something like “OK, it sounds like I can go ahead and order 8 teapots. Does that sound right to you?”
      2) I’ve gotten very comfortable with saying, “hey, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t quite understand what you just said about . Can you repeat it?”

      1. Ellis Bell*

        It’s interesting that you say you’d be Peter in this scenario, and you have ADHD; I think OP is assuming this is how nuerotypicals talk, because they can handle the word salad, and remember to circle back, but not necessarily so. Peter could be a completely different type of neurospicy, the same type of neurospicy but without any skin in this particular game so he’s in distracted mode as opposed to hyperfocus, or he could just be a neurotypical who doesn’t particularly want to answer the question explicitly because of infinite non-brain-operation reasons. These conversations could easily happen between my cousin and I; we both have ADHD but she’s hyperactive type, I’m inattentive type. She is incapable of answering a question without jumping into a dozen unrelated topics, and I’ve stopped listening two minutes after the conversation stopped being relevant.

  13. Candace*

    Thanks for asking this – I’ve experience many similar conversations and it really helps to see advice on how to handle it.

  14. FMNDL*

    OP, I feel your frustration. It is mind-boggling the inefficiency and unnecessary confusion when every conversation requires becoming an investigative reporter to figure out what someone means.

    Had my annual review recently and as always when asked for my feedback, my only (seemingly simple) request was that people provide clear, direct and specific instructions so that my ND brain can understand expectations and meet them. As always, the answer was essentially “no.”

    So we spend our lives bending over backwards to accommodate others and wishing our brains were normal (or at least I do).

    1. Catwhisperer*

      And if you decide that enough is enough, you can’t continue to put yourself through the stress of changing to meet everyone else’s needs while no one tries to meet yours, people get reallllllyyyyyy mad at you even if they know you have ADHD or another neurodivergence.

      That, Dear Reader, is how I got pushed put of my last company and why I’m considering a career pivot.

      1. FMNDL*

        Hugs, Catwhisperer, hugs.

        I’m there too, looking seriously into trying to make freelance sustainable.

    2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      I sympathize with you. I will also say that it is highly unlikely anyone is being deliberately unhelpful to you. We all, ND or NT, think we are being clear when we talk because we know what’s inside our own heads. We can’t know what’s in anyone else’s head, but we assume it’s the same. It’s usually not! I have a masters in communications and I still can’t always get my point across. I can rephrase something 5 times and feel like it’s impossible not to be understood and yet have it still be so. Which is very frustrating, but doesn’t mean anyone else is being lazy or mean to me.

      One thing that I think gets left out of NT vs ND debates is the Ask culture/Guess culture divide. My husband is ND, but also from a Guess culture family. He will not give a straight answer to anything, because in his family, being direct is rude. Having an opinion is rude. He doesn’t do it on purpose. Meanwhile, I’m over here like, “Please, just say yes or no!”

      I believe you are trying very hard, but you can’t know that nobody else is making an effort. You can both be trying and still fail. I think you’ll feel better if you stop attributing malice to all NT people.

  15. ADHD Anon*

    Just want to say, as someone who struggles with real-time information and audio processing due to similar diagnoses, thank you Alison for laying your response out kindly and with understanding even when pointing out why response #3 could have been seen as impolite. I really benefit from clear and patient explanations like this and I hope OP does too!

  16. WorstTimeline*

    This is all excellent training for a future as a congressperson at committee hearings, nobody ever answer the question anymore.

    I’m exasperated on your behalf.

    1. Nightengale*

      I was at an event once hosted by several local disability advocacy groups to ask questions to local and state politicians about disability issues. Not a one of the politicians really answered the exact questions asked. They gave prepared question-adjacent answers. Finally, one of the autistic people in the audience said something along the lines of “thank you but that didn’t answer my question” and then restated the question. (if I recall he got something slightly closer to an answer the second time.)

      1. amoeba*

        I mean, have politicians/CEOs/etc. ever just answered the question? I feel like that’s been frustrating me since I was old enough to watch TV… Company townhalls are the worst! Guess it’s kind of in the job description.
        Of course, at least for the townhalls it’s usually because they either just don’t know or are *literally not allowed to give a straight answer*. I mean, I know that going in and I know the Q&As are 99% a waste of time, but well. It’s still annoying to listen to!

      2. Jane*

        I like the BBC because imo their reporters tend to really actually follow up when someone doesn’t answer a question, including following up repeatedly or stating that the person didn’t answer the question. Whereas a lot of American reporters will just let someone give the politician “say something related that doesn’t answer the question” type answer and leave it there. I’m sure the BBC could do better at that too but I definitely notice a difference. And I’d love to hear other countries’ news agencies who do that even more assiduously.

  17. Momma Bear*

    Sometimes it helps to repeat back to them what you think you heard and clarify what you need. “Bill, it sounds like you’ve been busy! Are you using Conference Room B at 2 PM today?”

    It can be kind of like one of those math problems in school where you don’t need to know that Sally’s shoes are purple to figure out how many apples she had. If I am typing an answer, I might type it out, read it, and cut it down and add something to make it “warm,” like a greeting or “Thanks!”

  18. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    These are moments when I use a lot of “I-statements.” Things like, “sorry, I’m not clear on the number of teapots” or “so I’m sure, the plan is that I’ll order 5 teapots, yes?” or “just so I know for certain, Peter hasn’t gotten the onboarding package, yeah?” It makes it be about me and what I need to know and minimizes the risk that it’ll come off like a criticism of the other person.

    2. me*

      +1

      Other phrases I’ll use:
      “To confirm…”
      “Let me repeat that back to you to make sure I’ve got it…”

      This helps me consolidate what’s been said (if needed), show that I’ve been listening, gives them a chance to correct me, and then when I’ve finished repeating/confirming, I can cheerfully end the interaction and thank the person.

    4. KitKat*

      100% I do this All. The. Time
      To add to the list of possible phrasings:
      “Let me play that back to make sure I’ve got it right..”
      “Just to be super explicit about the decision here, it’s…”
      “I’m getting a little lost here, but it sounds like…”

    5. iglwif*

      “Just to confirm” and “Just so I’m 100% clear” and “Just to make sure we’re all on the same page” and all those kinds of phrases are SUPER helpful in this type of situation.

      I don’t care if I briefly look / sound a bit dim, if it elicits the information I need to do my job.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Same. The benefits of it seeming like it’s an issue with me or my understanding, rather than them being unclear, often outweigh the risk of potentially seeming like I’m not on the ball.

  19. Bird Lady*

    I work in tech support, and sometimes I’m asked a question that seems like it should be an easy yes/no answer, but needs more context or more information. Sometimes it can be a lot of information about how something can be broken. One of the things I do to invite questions is throw in a “I know I just threw a lot of information at you/ a bunch of troubleshooting steps. Please do not hesitate to reach back out if this prompts any questions or you’d like clarification on anything.” I know this doesn’t answer LW’s question, but definitely something to think about when giving people information they may not realize they need to solve a problem!

  20. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    OP – a suggestion to get over the issue of “20 minutes later I realize they never answered my question.”:

    Before you ask the question, write it down. Then don’t leave the conversation until you look at that question and see whether you wrote an answer down next to it.

    I don’t have an auditory issue, but I have worked with rambling digressive people before, and I’ve used this method to re-center myself and generate a way to close out the conversation. This may take some practice and some trial-and-error. Should you use a paper journal, or sticky notes, or an electronic note tool? Hard to say what will work best for you until you try it.

    Good luck!

    1. Momma Bear*

      I have literally walked up to people with a sticky note in hand. It helps me remember and them to realize I have a specific thing I need.

      I’ve also started mentally putting a pin in conversations and returning to the point. I do this with dear ones who have so much to say that we forget what we were talking about. I started doing it at work as well and a coworker finally noticed last week. “So, to get back to…”

  21. AuD[HD]ball*

    This is the kind of answer that makes me so deeply appreciate Alison! ND or not, it is such a gift to have clear and explained instruction on how to talk to people and get things done.

    1. AuDHD Millennial*

      As I’ve been saying to myself constantly since I read it in the book I recommended below, even though not everyone is autistic, we all benefit from a world that is friendly to neurodiverse people. I also think about how much of the hidden curriculum in work places is also a struggle for people who are not from the dominant language, social class, or otherwise.

      Alison is truly making so many lives better.

  22. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I’m the odd one out here because I like it when people like that talk to me in situations where I don’t want to do what they’re suggesting. The most common example is when someone wants me to do something that’s clearly illegal or unethical, but they don’t think so because they have good intentions. I’ve already said no a million times, but they want to negotiate.

    What happens is they’ll call a meeting with my boss and me. I’ll ask a bunch of direct questions and get garbage word salad that doesn’t answer my question. That way, I run out the clock on the meeting, and we adjourn without accomplishing anything. They don’t even realize I never agreed to anything. They had their say, and they’re happy? I don’t know!

    I stand alone, I know!

    1. fhqwhgads*

      OK but nothing in the letter was illegal or unethical. If the strategy is to deflect, sure, that’s a way to deflect. But if OP’s colleagues are intentionally deflecting when the question is “do you have any meetings?” or “should I order 5x?” that’s…something.

  23. DramaQ*

    It is perfectly fine to tell Peter “We can talk about the peppermint later right now I need a number so I can get this order completed”.

    I work in a field where a lot of people just love to hear themselves talk and will tell you an entire thesis defense before actually getting to what they want.

    I have found it useful to parrot back what they said to me. I will say “So to recap you want me to X, Y, Z is that correct?” and that makes them pause and confirm I heard the answer to my question or whatever instructions they are trying to give me.

    And I have used versions of my suggestion for talking to Peter .

    I will do the same in Teams or in emails I will write back a recap. That gives them time to agree or correct it and covers my ass in case they rambled so much neither one of us now understands or remembers it like we were supposed to.

  24. Heeyeee*

    Some things I’ve found helpful in a role where I need concrete answers and inferring isn’t good:

    – Ask the question, give context after. “Do you need teapot #3 today?” [hopefully they answer] “Thanks, Timmy wanted it for the breakroom for the meeting…”

    – Follow up with softening phrases like “Just to confirm…”, “To make sure I understood…”, “To double check…”, “Did I get this right, you….”, “Am I right in thinking that…”, “My take away is that you…” and restate what you understood.

    – Try not to give more than one option to a question. “Do you need the teapot?” not “Do you need the teapot or can I take to my office?”. Getting “Yes” or “No” replies when there are multiple options is frustrating.

    Some industries/offices/cultures are okay with really blunt, straightforward communication if it’s something you ever want to seek out. It can be a relief. I’ve found this difference in high tech. vs. government.

  25. I should really pick a name*

    Sometimes it helps to reply with what you think (or hope) the answer is.

    Example 1: “So no meetings?”

    Example 2: “So I’ll order 5?”

    Example 3: “So you haven’t sent it to Peter because he’s not in California or Texas?”

    If it turns out you’re wrong, people will often be more willing to respond to something if it’s a correction.

    1. Zarniwoop*

      There’s a famous quote I vaguely remember about how if you want info from the internet asking a question generates few responses, but posting something wrong gets a ton of corrections.

      1. Sumana Harihareswara*

        Yes, Cunningham’s Law:

        “The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

        Named after Ward Cunningham, who invented wiki software.

  26. Sylvia Fisher*

    Any of these could be conversations with my husband, who is notorious for being sidetracked in conversation. I’ll ask what we need from the grocery store and he’ll say, “I thought we needed milk but actually I just checked and we should be fine for a few more days, but see if they have any ripe pears, but if not pears then oranges, and hey maybe we should make a salad tonight, so check the fridge to see if our greens are still good, and maybe something yummy to snack on? But not popcorn because we’ve had a lot of that this week.” At this point I will have erroneously written “milk, popcorn” on my list and nothing else.

    1. Frieda*

      This made me laugh out loud and also ruefully remember the one (1) time I had to help my mother plan a party. Every single thought that passed through her head got full air time, none of which were an answer to my question, which was: Do you have a menu in mind for the party, and if so, what is on that menu?

      The next time she started talking about a party I asked when she was planning to have it and the response is “Whenever everybody can come” so I mentally made a note that there was not going to be a party, and I was 100% correct.

    2. Jane*

      Lol this is the type of thing I would do and to me this is a really useful and comprehensive answer! I would conclude
      a) We don’t need milk right now, we have 2-3 days of milk left. BUT if you don’t anticipate going to the store again for more than 3 days, then you should get milk.
      b) Get some pears if they’re good, but if not get oranges. [The subtext is “definitely absolutely get SOME TYPE of fruit no matter what” – if I heard this, and for some weird reason there were neither any good pears and no oranges at the store, I would get a different fruit. probably grapefruit or apples because those are similar to oranges and pears]
      c) I want to eat salad tonight, please look in the refrigerator and see if our greens are still good before you go to the store. if they’re not, then get salad greens. Also, please check if we have other good salad ingredients in the fridge. If we don’t, it would be a good idea to get a couple things that would be good in salad at the store.
      d) Please get a snack item that’s not popcorn [I interpret this as the least important request]

      1. Allonge*

        Ha, this. I totally get that for some people, their brain setup does not allow these conclusions or not ‘live’ anyway, but… a lot of ‘bad communication’ examples given here are just how people talk sometimes, not being robots.

        It’s really ok to ask someone to write the shopping list though!

  27. JSPA*

    People are allowed to talk things through, if that’s how they arrive at their answer. But you’re allowed to double back.

    For the onboarding: “so, that’s a ‘No,’ if I’m hearing you right–correct?”

    for the number of teapots: “I hear you.
    But if you’re still deciding or debating, that’s above my pay grade. I see two choices. One is to order them all late, when you finish thinking it through, which means we [pay extra for express shipping] / [risk not getting them in time] / [upset the spout team lead] / [whatever the negative is]. The other is for you to take responsibility for telling me to order whatever number you are currently comfortable stating.”

    or,
    “I’m hearing a lot of hypotheticals and debates regarding an ideal number. But my job, today, is more basic: get a number from you, and order that many. I don’t have standing to broker disagreements or to change the process. So…now that you’ve talked it through, what number are you comfortable telling me to order?”

    1. displaythisname*

      Agreed! If I take a little while to arrive at a clear answer and say some extraneous thoughts along the way, it’s not because I’m hiding an answer from you. It’s because I’m thinking through the question out loud, in real time, and you’re seeing the process of how I arrive at an answer (which, depending on the question, might be interesting and useful to you or might be extraneous and distracting). If I’ve lost you along the way, it’s okay to politely remind me of your original question.

      FWIW, I’ve found this to be a pretty common point of miscommunication between introverts and extroverts: Extroverts often need to think things through out loud in order to figure out their answer.

      1. FMNDL*

        Yes, very different styles! By the time I say anything, I’ve thought it out six ways to Sunday and cannot go five more rounds on it.

      2. Zarniwoop*

        But if you’re working it out out loud you should end up with an answer. (The answer could be “I don’t know yet”)

  28. Human Embodiment of the 100 Emoji*

    I find that an easy way to circumvent this problem, especially in meetings or one-on-ones, is to always end any conversation with asking everyone to agree on an explicit list of action items. For example “Person A will do task B by date C” and then write those action items down and email them to everyone involved. So instead of “Should I order 5 teapots?”, you could say “I will order 5 teapots on Sunday. Do you concur?”. I feel like this gets the kind of person who hems and haws or has to use the meeting to work out their entire thought process out loud to make concrete decisions more quickly.

  30. Casey*

    Oh this is really interesting because I am probably the person on the other side of this debate. I get asked a lot of vague questions and I always feel compelled to provide them with all possible context to avoid misinterpreting my responses. I really think sharing WHY you’re asking will help!! For example, people often ask me if I have meetings when what they really mean is “are you free for me to take a significant amount of your time today”, so then I try to share why my schedule is full regardless of meetings. Whereas if someone asks “do you have meetings today? I’m trying to book the conference room”, that’s way easier to respond to.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      So, if you want to do this, you just need to check your passenger hasn’t fallen out of the side car at really frequent intervals. It makes the road bumpiest if you’re changing topic without asking them a question before you do, or giving them a chance to interject. Instead of info dumping, treat it as parcel passing. So, when OP’s colleague says “I used to order 10 teapots every month, but that got to be too much…” before going on to talk about how an automated system will solve this problem, or the Peppermint licence, you’d say “So, ten was a bit much; is that enough of a rough guide or do you need more information?” and you need to close up any explanations with “did that answer your question?”

    2. Mango Freak*

      Another grown woman with severe ADHD and I too vote that ADHD has nothing to do with this problem

      I ask direct, specific questions. Sometimes I even have the chance to hone the question I’m going to ask into the perfect, most efficient version of the question that is getting precisely at what I mean to ask. I often hear myself say, “well, what’s the question here really?”

      Some people just don’t want to listen to your question, or don’t want to answer the question you asked.

      It’s GOOD that you can’t retain the nonsense information. Your brain is sieving out everything that’s not the info you need. You just need to spend less energy TRYING to interpret the nonsense, and come in sooner with the “follow up” question (that is likely the same question as before).

  31. Oh wow*

    Thank god, I’m not the only one who deals with this. It doesn’t help that I’m always second-guessing myself when I get these kind of answers, such as whether I should’ve somehow deduced something on the spot through inference or elusive background knowledge.

    It’s not just my professional life, either. My parents communicate the same way as the first two conversations, except it’s always my fault for not reading their minds and figuring out the answers they never directly gave me. Lots of self-esteem issues abound from there.

  32. Samwise*

    OP, this is not your ADHD. This is coworkers being exasperatingly human. I would have no trouble hearing and remembering all the blah blah blah (it is a superpower!), but I would also notice that I didn’t get an answer to my question, so I’d do something like Alison’s scripts. Probably adding in: “Wow, that must be so frustrating!” because then people feel heard and think of you as sympathetic.

    When I don’t notice in the moment, just get back with them when you do remember.

      1. Hroethvitnir*

        Yes! And the auditory processing part is getting glossed over a lot – that’s potentially more of the issue than the ADHD, and it is really hard to communicate to others. (I do not have it but I have known people who do, and it seems intensely frustrating.)

  33. Bottled Rage*

    You are not alone. Those interactions are frustrating. I even disagree with Alison somewhat about the last example. The first time I read it, I didn’t think he answered your question. When Alison’s answer was different, I read it again and thought it could be interpreted either way.

  34. Support act*

    I’ve been managing a staff member who has ADHD for a while and can appear rude at first hearing. I’ve noticed and fed back to her that she doesn’t use as many filler words or rhetorical phrases which are often employed in a situation which might be considered difficult.
    “I’m ordering 5 teapots then.”
    Rather than
    “Ok, i’m going to go ahead and order 5 teapots then?”

    This can come across as rude when she is clarifying information, for me there’s no need for her to mask but she’s aware of how to use this information when she needs to. I don’t know if this is relevant to all but hope it helps

    1. AuDHD Millennial*

      I also wonder how much of this is gendered as well. When I stopped masking as much and stopped couching my sentences (“I think that…” or “I don’t know, did you say that…”) I was perceived as much more aggressive, and I don’t think that conversation would be the same for men in the workplace.

  35. Can't skip the context*

    I am a Michael from conversation #3, but I work with (and am also married to) someone like the OP. My colleague on our small team is very forthright about needing literal clarity and has found a formulation like, “What I hear you saying is…” or “OK, I now understand that X, not Y.” It feels pretty neutral to me and gives me a subtle reminder to include the “yes/no” phrasing that usually feels superfluous to me. People have different communication styles and naming that with anyone who might be receptive and/or anyone who you work with very frequently might be helpful!

    1. cosmicgorilla*

      Yes, I learned the “what I’m hearing you say” formulation! Was also going to recommend it.

      And I think sometimes it helps to be just a touch apologetic and self-deprecating. I’m not saying talk badly about yourself, but I might say, “Sorry to be a pest, but I do need a firm # on teapots.”

      (And please note that part of the other person’s process may be word salad! They may need to process out loud.)

      “Apologies, my brain is taking just a second to catch up. Do I understand correctly that you didn’t send Peter a package?”

  36. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

    For 3, it feels like the follow-up question might be “So, does Peter still need the onboarding package?” or “who should I talk to about getting Peter that information?” The problem isn’t that Michael didn’t answer directly, it’s that he was asked the wrong question.

    So Michael, reasonably, answered the question “did you send this to Peter?” What LW needs to know is either “did Peter get the package?” (Michael doesn’t know, but he knows he didn’t send it) or “who’s responsible for getting this info to New Jersey staff?” (which Michael might not know either). If LW had asked Michael one of those, either originally or as the follow-up, he’d probably have told them something like “I don’t know, talk to Lucinda” or “talk to Peter’s manager about that.”

    1. biobotb*

      Yeah, I think unfortunately part of the problem is that LW isn’t always asking the question she actually wants answered. Or doesn’t provide enough context to help guide whoever she’s asking in the right direction. But even with this, sometimes people still miss questions and ramble.

      1. bel*

        +1

        I want to add that people with ADHD tend to draw connections between things that neurotypical people might not, and that affects our communication when we expect them to think like us. We might say “A and D” because we expect someone to infer B and C. They won’t.

        We need to provide full context and ask exactly the question that we want answered.

  37. Rowan*

    Another option in that last type of conversation is to say something like, “Okay, so is there someone else I should ask about this? Just want to make sure I’ve got the right person for sending onboarding packets to New Jersey!”

    That may remind them that this needs to get done somehow, and whether it’s their responsibility or someone else’s.

  38. AuDHD Millennial*

    I just wanted to drop a comment to the LW that you are NOT alone. I am a 35-year old woman with two masters degrees on my second major career and I was just diagnosed with ADHD at 31 and autism at 35. I’ve been “successful” but have recently encountered a new workplace where my typical coping strategies ran into some issues and I had to undergo some pretty significant introspection and therapy work to understand how to move forward professionally without feeling like I’m pretending to be someone else entirely.

    One thing that helped me SO MUCH is connecting with fellow AuDHD folks who I feel safe with to ask them about the norms of corporate culture, in addition to finding a trusted person at my office to ask them about conversations or how to develop relationships. I struggle with people telling me something and then I do it, but I do it quite literally, in addition to being a bit more blunt. I suspect that if I was a man, these personality characteristics would have been seen as things to support my career instead of things that led my to understanding my disability, which was also very confusing to me, as I saw other people at my workplaces doing what I was doing and being rewarded.

    Finally, I can’t recommend enough a book that my therapist (who is also an AuDHD woman) recommended to me: Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD. Not only did it help me understand myself better, but it has made me significantly better at finding the moments where there are communication missteps between myself and neurotypical folks (https://www.amazon.com/Unmasking-Autism-Discovering-Faces-Neurodiversity/dp/0593235231).

  39. DeliCat*

    One thing I will say is; I’d very much interpret ‘do you have any meetings today?’ as office chit chat, akin to ‘busy day?’ I wouldn’t automatically assume it was a scheduling request that required me to provide specific availability.

    1. me*

      This is a good point! And this is where explaining *why* I’m asking may help the person get me the information I need

      “Hi Bob, do you have any meetings scheduled today? If not, do you have time to…”

    2. iglwif*

      That is what I would think, too. In the other cases, no, but it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where someone needs an answer to “can I book Meeting Room 2 at 13:00 or is someone else already using it?” but instead asks me if I have any meetings. “Do you have any meetings today” is squarely chitchat-coded in my brain.

      Mind you, that may be because for at least the past 15 years, I have worked in places where everyone’s calendar, or at least their free/busy data, is visible to everyone else, and where meeting rooms have their own calendars that you can also check. I realize that even in 2025, not all offices are like that.

      1. NewNameTime*

        I would too, until I started dealing with someone who would ask me if I had any meetings and would pout or seem displeased if the answer was anything other than no. It messed with my head at first because it feels like an out of pocket response to normal chitchat, but I had to accept that someone like this maybe doesn’t understand how to help other people answer their questions.

        We’re at an office with normal calendars, etc. but we have people who have a habit of asking for permission before they do anything. This is what being polite and friendly looks like for some of these people and it’s not really worth trying to get them to be more direct. Checking the calendar and using that information to figure out how to proceed or what to ask someone doesn’t come naturally to them.

    3. Saturday*

      Yeah, I think there’s a good chance that’s what Bill thought, so he just started chatting.

  40. Kelly With A Why*

    This is something I really struggle with as well, because I tend to be a very literal thinker. Something that works for me is taking responsibility for the crossed wires. For example, if I asked Bill if he had any meetings scheduled, and he said blah blah blah, I’d say something like, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I asked the question as clearly as I could have. What I really want to know is if you will have time to complete the revenue report today?” or whatever. As a bonus, I find that when I frame it that way in my own mind I feel a lot less annoyed about the word salad.

    For what it’s worth, I also would not have interpreted Michael’s onboarding answer as a “no” because “primarily” does not mean “exclusively.” But then, I find that things that seem clear to other people often aren’t clear to me.

  41. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    I’m a verbal processor so often if I don’t know the answer or understand the meaning of a question, I talk through it out loud – leading to answers a lot like OP’s coworkers sometimes! I personally wouldn’t be remotely offended or bothered if someone followed up with me later to say “I realized I’m not clear on X” and restating the question.

    You can also do a quick repeat-back, either verbally or in writing — both to help yourself see that it’s still unclear and to prompt the other person for a clear answer. Like in the second example, “what I’m hearing is you haven’t decided how many teapots to order yet – is that right?” Or in the third example, “It sounds like they haven’t gotten the onboarding packet yet – does that match your understanding?”

  42. WorkerDrone*

    OP, try two things:

    One, BEFORE you ask a question, think through what you’re really asking and see if you can phrase it more clearly or efficiently. Your first question: “Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?” is a good example. Were you literally just looking for a yes or no response from him? If so, why? That, to me, is kind of a confusing question because I have no idea what you’re getting at with it. Do you need to know so you can schedule with him?

    Try: “Hey, Bill, I need to meet with you for a half-hour at some point today – do you have any other meetings scheduled I should know about?”

    Two, WHEN you ask a question, try to dial in it to just the important and most literal info and cut out filler. So instead of, “Hey Peter, I’m getting ready to order the teapots, I just wanted to verify that nothing’s changed. We still need five, correct?”

    Try: “Hey Peter, I’m ordering 5 teapots, correct?”

    I know it seems like a little thing, but the phrasing of “we still need five, correct?” might have made Peter think, “we need EIGHT, ugh, that Joanna” – it kind of opens up to conversation about how many is needed rather than how many you’re ordering, in a way that a shorter, terser (but with a friendly tone of voice) question might not open it up.

    Three, for the third question, I agree that you did get an answer to it, it just wasn’t as literal as you wanted. This one I probably can’t offer any advice for.

    1. pumpkinn*

      I like to clarify afterwards. Even if you’re wrong, they tend to correct you quickly.

      Literally had a meeting with a waffler today and after he waffled, I just said “right, to clarify you need an alert on X if Y? Is that all X, or X in the criteria we used last time?” And managed to get a “yes, with the criteria from last time” after maybe 5 straight minutes of waffle before hand.

      Also works for Q3. “Just to clarify, that’s a no on having sent it to Newbie? No stress, just need to know!”

    3. Jane*

      I agree, asking somebody if they have any meetings today is honestly a pretty bizarre question. I can’t even understand how this would be a useful question in any circumstance at all, regardless of what the relevance is – unless you’re conducting an office wide poll!

      If you’re asking if they have any meetings because you want to use the conference room for your own meetings, “Do you have any meetings today?” isn’t useful because it could be an in-person meeting that needs the conference room or it could be a Zoom or offsite meeting. If you’re asking because you need to schedule some time with Bill or are hoping Bill can do something, it’s not useful to ask if he has any meetings because even if he has no meetings, he might have a doctor’s appointment or he might be working on a tight deadline project all day. If you’re asking just to make conversation, I would expect there to be some context like Bill has been complaining to you about how so much of his time has been taken up by meetings lately, so you’re prepared to either be like “yay awesome for you, a day with no meetings!” or “ugh that sucks, I hope you can get some uninterrupted time soon!”

  43. ADHD HR Lady*

    As an ADHDer myself, in questions like the teapot question (“How many do I need to order?”) I will instead say, “I’m going to order 5 teapots this time . Let me know if that’s okay- I’m placing the order tomorrow morning!” And then if there is something that we need to discuss, we can bring it up. But then I can always bring it back to my original declaration- “Okay, so it sounds like 6 teapots is probably better for now.” I do this for EVERYTHINGGGG and it is such a lifesaver! It also helps with the mental load since, instead of thinking about how many teapots we need, they now think I am ordering 5 teapots and if that’s enough. It makes me seem like more of a team player since I have given the issue some consideration.

    Other examples: “Hey Bill, I need to talk to you about the peppermint tea. Is 3pm okay in the small conference room?” <— Now Bill can tell me directly that he's not free at 3 but he is available at 2.

    I share this struggle!! It's the worst sometimes LOL

  44. Kella*

    OP, people not answering the question that I asked is a huge pet peeve of mine so I also struggle with not getting frustrated and snarky with them.

    An idea to keep in mind: Sometimes people use answers like these to obscure the fact that *they* don’t have a clear answer, but people usually find it easier to correct or confirm a specific answer when this happens. So in the second conversation, after the first or second runaround, you could’ve said, “Okay, so ordering five as planned still works?” You can say this even if you think this answer is wrong because even if the answer is “No” you’re more likely to get a replacement number this way. If this *still* doesn’t work, you could say, “Alright, well I’m going to stick with ordering five then” giving them a last opportunity to correct you. You can try guessing what you think the answer is based on their vague response, or if that’s overwhelming, you can just pick an answer that’s easy for your brain and use it to ground the conversation. This helps circumvent the issue in the third conversation, by saying, “Okay, so he has not received the packet, correct?”

    This strategy doesn’t work as well in the first conversation I think in part because it sounds like “do you have any meetings?” was a precursor to another question like “Would you have time to work on X today?” or “Would you be available for a 2:00 meeting?” In that case, using Alison’s formula of stating what info you need and why should help get closer to an answer.

  45. Libraries R Us*

    Reference librarian here. I spend my days answering poorly phrased questions from confused students. I generally turn the question back on myself. If I am sufficiently diplomatic, then it looks like I need clarification, not that they’re rambling, confusing, or off topic.

    (College students have a better excuse for not knowing what they’re doing or giving bizarre answers since they’re here to learn. Still people are gonna people.)

    – “I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly – you’re doing XYZ? Is that right?”
    – “Ok, just to clarify, you need X from me?”
    – “I want to make sure I can help you most effectively, so can you tell me more about Y?”
    – “Before we move on, can you answer Z for me?”
    – “Yeah, [situation] sounds like a lot! I want to use your time well though, so what specifically are you hoping to leave this meeting with? We have time for X or Z.”
    – “Have you done Y? I’m asking so I know how best to assist you.”

    Obviously, these would need some tweaks for direct questions to a coworker, but people usually respond well when they think they’re helping me understand a specific thing, versus being accused of not answering.

  46. Beni L.*

    Hi there, fellow ADHD person with ADHD friends who also have the same things going on.

    Here are some of my tips – I’ll write down what information I need to collect in a notebook before I talk to someone and that way, even if we get on other topics, I can always say “Oh hey, before we forget, can you tell me (x)?” and I’ll pull out a notebook, ready to write it down. Sometimes, if they get carried away, I’ll rephrase the question or say “I’m so sorry, I only have a couple minutes to collect this. (X) please?”

    For people who get long winded, I’ll break down my questions to yes/no answers so that if they start to ramble I’ll say, “Is that a yes or no?” and if they still can’t be direct, I’ll say “It’s okay if you don’t know the answer. You can just say that you don’t know. Do you know who would have the answer?”

    One of the things that can be tricky is that ADHD folks tend to lean towards “Explicit language” but there’s lots of places where it’s more culturally appropriate to use “Implicit language.” Bob might be a person who uses the second when you might be someone who uses the first.

    let’s take an example. Person A wants to have a meeting. Person B has a heavy work load that means if they accept attending a meeting of unknown length, or that might run over time, they might not be able to complete a task.

    Explicit language is
    Person A: “Do you have availability to meet today?”
    Person B: “Yes, but I would prefer to meet tomorrow.”
    Explicit language require direct answers but also doesn’t necessary allow space for people to carefully navigate complicated situations. If Person A is a manager or in a position of authority, Person B might be concerned about explaining why they would prefer not to meet. If Person A presses the issue without asking for clarification, Person B will have to agree to a meeting and be at risk of not completing urgent tasks.

    Implicit Language is
    Person A: “Do you have availability to meet today?”
    Person B: “There’s the Jane Doe briefing due and there’s a board of directors discussion at 9am.”
    Implicit language here allows person B to communicate information that Person A might need to have in order to work out for themselves if they want to schedule a meeting with that information in mind. It lets person B infer that there’s a schedule block around the board meeting and that they have a specific task that needs to be completed. Person B would expect Person A to either provide more information and/or follow up based on that. Like “It’ll be 20 minutes, do you have enough time today to set aside for that? if not, when is you next availability tomorrow.” or for Person A to say “The board meeting is over at 11. Let’s meet at 11:30.”

    I would also suggest telling Bob something like “I’m having a bit of trouble focusing today, I need a clear answer on this.” before asking a question that could lead to rambling.

    Good luck, stranger!

    1. Lilian Field*

      This is great advice. Writing down the question ahead of time not only cues the other person in to your need for *specific information*; it can also serve as a visual reminder *for you* of the information you are trying to collect. The more focused/mindful you can be of that information, the easier a time you will have redirecting the conversation/making sure that you get all the details you need before you go.

  47. RCB*

    OP, sometimes you have to be rude, and it’s okay. Honestly I don’t think you are being rude, you just feel like you are, but what you are doing is fine, THEY are the issue. I will caveat this with other’s suggestions that you do need to stop asking such open ended questions and ask for exactly what you need, but once you do that and still don’t get the answer it’s not rude to directly ask for the answer you need.

    The direct question thing is the difference between asking a friend “Are you free on Saturday?” versus “Are you free to help me move a sofa on Saturday?”, those are very different questions and you need to ask specifically what you need, because my schedule may be free but I may not be able to help move a sofa, so save some steps and just ask what you need to actually know.

    This happens to be ALL the time, people will not give you an answer, and in my cases it largely is because people don’t want to say no, so they just say something without actually answering your question, so they can say they answered you but without having to actually turn you down. It’s gotten to be such a problem that honestly there is no option but to just be blunt about it and say “that didn’t answer the question” or “I’m not sure that answered my question” or sometimes I even say “that provided me with no useful information”. I no longer care if someone thinks I am being rude, they are being rude by wasting my time, be an adult and just give me an answer to my question!

  48. Catwhisperer*

    Fellow ADHD-er here, just want to affirm that you’re not the only one who read Michael’s response as not having answered your question, though Alison and others feel differently. What it comes down to is that our brains are wired differently and don’t always pick up on information that’s implied as opposed to stated outright. I’ve noticed this difficulty pops up more frequently when dealing with people who are uncomfortable saying no directly, so I try to handle this by assuming that any response that’s not explicitly a “yes” is a no.

    You can always follow that up by restating your understanding if you want to make extra sure. In this case you could’ve said something like, “Thanks for that info! Just to make sure I’m understanding, Jersey isn’t within your remit so you haven’t been involved in Peter’s onboarding. Do you know who manages that process for Jersey so I can reach out to the right person?”

    I also want to flag that even though we can offer a million suggestions in hindsight, it’s incredibly difficult to implement them in real time when you’re deeply confused/overwhelmed. I don’t think there’s ever going to be any true solution, so don’t beat yourself up if this continues to happen despite your best efforts.

  49. Nesprin*

    Especially with people who don’t know what they want or who are prone to worry about step 7 when we’re on step 2, I’ve had weirdly good luck with guessing and asking the other person if that’s right.

    “Ok, it sounds like you cancelled your meeting so I can book the conference room- is that right?”
    “Ok, it sounds like we need 6 teapots and to blacklist chamomile- is that right?”
    “I’ll go with purple then, unless there’s something I’m missing”

  50. Another Kristin*

    The “You didn’t answer my question” bit of Conversation #3 strikes me as a bit rude. I’d say something like “Sorry, just to clarify, did you send the onboarding packet?” It’s not rude to clarify but saying “you didn’t answer my question” feels a bit accusatory, like you’re saying he’s being deliberately evasive rather than trying to clarify what he said.

    1. Hard of hearing*

      Just remove the “sorry” part. I like the “just to clarify….”
      I’m personally working on not apologizing all of the time.

  51. Alex*

    In my experience, people who answer questions with non-answers are trying to hide their lack of confidence and/or ignorance. My former boss constantly did this to me.

    Me: I’ve received this teapot with a chip in it. Should I send it back to manufacturing or should I try to glue it back together?
    Her: Well, ideally teapots wouldn’t have chips in them.
    Me: Right, yes, that would be nice, but this one does have one. What should I do?
    Her: We should come up with a process to address how to reduce chips in teapots.
    Me: OK. But, this teapot already has one, and it is due tomorrow. What do you think?
    Her: I’m going to schedule a meeting to discuss new processes to address chips in teapots.
    Me: Great, I think that’s a good idea, but meanwhile I have this teapot due, and it has a chip.
    Her: It’s a shame it has a chip. Ideally teapots wouldn’t come in with chips.
    Me: AGGHGHHHHHH

    2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      OMG, I used to have an IT person who always did this. I’d report a problem and he’d *always* say, “That shouldn’t be happening.” I’m like yes, I know, that’s why I contacted you. But he wouldn’t keep going.

  52. Liz*

    OP I also have ADHD and for a long time I thought it was why I always came out of conversations (or long email chains!) not totally understanding the action items or whether we’d made a decision.

    Then I started asking my colleagues for confirmation and discovered – none of them knew, either, and they were just guessing! (So many times I’d ask “Hey, this is silly but… did Belinda actually approve the new tea pot design?” and they’d respond “I think so? But I guess I don’t know for sure.”)

    My most effective coping strategy is to go back to the person you need information from, tell them your best guess at an answer, and let them confirm or correct it. (And if they do neither, go with your best guess!)

    So:
    – #1: “Sounds like you don’t have any meetings this afternoon after Bob cancelled, is that right?”
    – #2: “Just to confirm, you want me to order 8 teapots?” << this is a wild guess based on the fact that he said 10 was too many, you are forcing him to react and make a decision about whether 8 is sufficiently less than 10.
    – #3: "OK, so you haven't sent the onboarding packet yet. Do you have an estimate of when you'll be able to get that out?" << forces him to make a plan, if he hasn't yet

    1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      Oh, this reminds me – that’s a thing I keep telling my husband. He has ADD and he often has assumed that he is the problem if he has any difficulty at all. We’ve had a lot of conversations where I share my own thoughts or that something is actually very common with NT people and he’s blown away that they are just problems, not problems he created.

      How often do any of us actually check with others to see if they are also confused or unsure? It’s pretty common to assume we’re alone and everyone else “gets it”.

  53. No creative name yet*

    This is so interesting to me, as I have been on the side of the OP’s coworkers. Part of it is I personally would rather be given more information and context rather than less, even if it’s not necessary for the specific situation, and I realize I unconsciously assume my colleagues have similar needs. For example, in #2, it seems like he’s saying that the process is going to change and they’re still figuring out the current number (or there’s internal debate). It’s possible the info could be helpful for the OP to understand how decisions are made or how the process will change which may affect their own work processes, if not now for the future. Same with #3, it seems he’s giving OP important information–unless someone’s onboarded in those states he won’t have given them the packet. Having insight into the onboarding process from his perspective might help the OP know how to frame their requests better or go about it differently.

    None of this means they shouldn’t push to get the info they need, just that it might be helpful to reframe these interactions in their own head when they get frustrated. Colleagues may not be just trying to give you extraneous information. That may be so in some cases, and they may just be venting/verbally processing, but they may also be giving you information that’s useful.

    This also helps me think about ways I can improve in interactions with people who operate similar to the OP, so thank you!

  54. NewbieL*

    I have had this issue with a particular coworker lately! I’ll ask her a specific, carefully-worded question (through email, since we work in different locations): “What problem is caused by doing x that justifies the policy against it? I’d like to understand” and get back, “You can’t visit that site because that involves doing x.” Or “What is the timeline for hearing more info on y?” will be met with, “What is your question about y?” It’s driving me up the wall.

  55. Coelura*

    As a project manager, I frequently face this issue. I ask a question, get no real answers, ask again, get a diversion, round & round we go. I find that I just have to keep at it using much of the techniques that Alison recommends. My problem is usually getting people to give me a date when they will complete the work. Most people don’t feel comfortable committing to a date, particularly if they’ve had bad experiences with needing to adjust a due date to valid reasons. Just this morning I had a scenario like this:
    Engineer: So I need to adjust the code that tells the 3D printer how to print the tea pot handle.
    Me: When do you think you can complete that?
    Engineer: Well, priority is really to fix the other issues with the code for the rest of the new tea pot. And I need to…
    Me: So based upon your other work for this project, when do you think you can realistically complete this code?
    Engineer: Well it depends on what the product manager prioritizes and how testing goes today.
    Me: With a hard date of user testing starting 4/14, and knowing that we need to complete technical testing & remedial coding work after your initial code, can you complete the work by 3/28?
    Engineer: If things go right and nothing else comes in, I can try to shoot for that date, but…
    Me: Great, I’m putting down 3/28 as the due date. If this shifts, please get with me right away.

    The Engineer never actually provided me a date or committed to the one I provided, but I’ve got one that I’ll repeatedly ask for status against in our daily standup meetings. We can adjust if necessary, but there is date there.

    1. Jane*

      To me this isn’t really a satisfactory communication on either end – to me, the engineer is saying that it’s highly doubtful that the work can be completed by 3/28. If I were the engineer, I would probably walk away thinking that I let you know that the date is unrealistic and there’s a good chance the work will not be completed by then, so everyone else should plan accordingly. If I were you, I would walk away thinking that the engineer is obligated to finish the work by 3/28 and that it will be their responsibility if any future timeline problems ensue.

  56. Hard of hearing*

    LW, I understand the auditory processing part of this. Since I experienced hearing loss and now listen to the world through a cochlear implant it is very hard for me to process people who ramble on and don’t get to the answer. I am upfront about my hearing loss and explain that I wasn’t able to catch that and repeat the question. If after that I still don’t understand if the question was answered I make an assumption (often the least favorable one so that they can disagree) and then validate it. For example:

    Me: As you know, I sometimes struggle hearing. Can you repeat – did you send the TPN report on Tuesday?
    Person: Right. Yeah, well see, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
    Me: Ok, so you did not send it as scheduled, right?

  57. Computer Man*

    Answering the Helpdesk phone is a lot of fun. You either get too much information or too little information. I have one coworker who is really nice but waffles a lot, and I have to wait for her to finish talking so I can interject with questions or answers.

    Which is still a million times better than:
    “It’s not working.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “The program.”
    “Which program?”
    “The weighbridge program.”
    “What isn’t it doing?”
    “Everything.”

    ^ also at this point, we have 10 different locations and the operator usually hasn’t told me which site they’re calling from – sometimes not even their name.

    1. Wayward Sun*

      Reminds me of when I was on call 24/7 and would get calls in the middle of the night from people who would say “the Internet isn’t working,” by which they could mean anything from “the entire network is down and we’re dead in the water” to “someone moved the Internet Explorer icon off the desktop.”

        1. Computer Man*

          Actually that reminds me: when I worked in a computer repair shop, we were rural so had a lot of customers on satellite. The amount of times we’d get “the satellite internet isn’t working, my screen is saying no signal. I can’t get into anything!” and you’d eventually realise they meant the *monitor* wasn’t displaying anything…

    2. Kelly L.*

      Worked for a little while as a pharmacy cashier and would have this conversation several times a day:

      “I’m here to pick up my prescription.”
      “OK, what’s your last name?”
      “It’s for my Lipitor.”
      “OK, great, what’s the name on your order?”
      “I take it for my cholesterol.”
      “I’ll look that right up for you. Can I get your name?”
      “Dr. Smith prescribed it.”

      AAAHHHHH! They were filed by patient name. They could have skipped all of this lol.

  58. here to help*

    Great question and answer.
    I like the solution of always including “why” you’re asking, or what you’re going to do with the answer.
    Some people at work at me direct questions without context, and a direct answer is not always a resolution to their request. I’ve noticed that, so I try to always give answers complete with supplemental information, and when I ask questions I include why I’m asking in the likely event that the context is important.

  59. Other Alice*

    This is interesting because I also run into this problem a lot, but also because part of my job is to get certain specifications from the customer. Because it concerns sensitive personal information, I need to get a definite yes/no answer, so something like #3 would not have been good enough for me, I need zero ambiguity that we can proceed without risking legal ramifications later. It’s good to have those scripts in my back pocket when I need to prod people for more definite confirmation!

  60. Always Tired*

    Oh man, this was me yesterday, I have 5 questions, all with short easy answers (think: how many more senior teapot painters does your team need hired? Do you want to move forward with candidate Joe Smith for an in person interview?) and it took 20 minutes even with me being kinda snarky on the redirects. I start with gentle redirects, then start asking absurd questions that show what was said is not actually an answer to the original question (“So you want me to fire these two employees?” “what? no!” “then what do they have to do with the number of teapot painters you need to hire?”). Then get down to “That is not what I asked, I need an answer on Joe Smith. Reject him, or in person interview?”

  61. Mango Freak*

    Ugh this is my rage fuel. I asked someone in a meeting, from a different team, “Are you usually given an event budget up-front?” And instead of answering that, she started explaining how to budget, generally.

    (I think she didn’t want to admit that, like our teams, she is not given an event budget up-front, which is even more embarrassing for her team than for ours.)

    (But also she’s just like that.)

    1. tiny potato*

      literally the only thing more exasperating than someone not answering the question you asked is when they don’t answer the question you asked by instead patronizingly answering a question that is four or five levels of sophistication below the question you actually asked.

      Because then you know that not only did they not listen to you, but also the reason they didn’t listen to you is because they believe you are four or five levels too uninformed to have actually asked the question you did.

      1. cncx*

        This was every day, multiple times a day, at my last job. At some point I was like “if you think I have the iq and job skills of a broken toaster or sentient cauliflower, why did I get this job?” Don’t miss it at all

      2. Mango Freak*

        and this person absolutely knew I’d planned events for the org. she was just blathering.

        some people are so accustomed to blathering, they don’t understand that they’re doing it. then when you ask a direct, specific question, they see that answering it would mean backtracking on some of the things they just blathered.

        I suspect they have bosses who’ve conditioned them this way. they get approving nods for blather, but reprimands for “I don’t know, let me check” or even pausing to think.

  62. MSD*

    Politicians usually answer questions like this. Next time you’re watching a debate or an interview make a conscious effort to remember the actual question that is supposed to be answered. Then listen to the “answer”. You’ll find that it’s really hard to remember the question and to notice that it was never actually answered. There are lots and lots and lots of words and eventually they manage to “answer” a totally different question. I think they’re trained to respond in this fashion. Rarely does the person asking the question call them on it.

    1. tiny potato*

      Oh, yes. When I used to work in politics, it was repeatedly emphasized never to answer a question a journalist answered, but instead to give the message you wanted to transmit that was in the vague area the journalist answered. It’s depressing how supine the journalists must be for that to be an effective strategy.

  63. Jojo*

    I’ve started using a negative confirmation request a lot, especially when I know the other party doesn’t respond directly to a question. Hi Peter – I’m planning to order 5 teapots this afternoon, let me know if you want me to do something different. I know it’s easier on them, and with email I have a clear trail that I asked the question. (I should add that I give time for a response, I don’t use this as a gotcha.)

  64. MaxPower*

    Putting myself in Peter’s shoes, I read the question from the OP as almost an accusation, and his response as a defense.

    He may well be hearing the question as: “You were supposed to send the packet, have you done it yet?”

    And he’s responding by trying to explain that he wasn’t lazy and forgot, but that it’s not really his job to do so.

    If he’s worked with people who used questions like the OP’s as gotchas, he may very well have developed a habit of answering this type of question with the reason he did or didn’t do something.

    3. Wayward Sun*

      Hah, I got that a lot growing up. My mom (who is otherwise lovely) would ask accusatory questions like “why aren’t you helping your father mow?” instead of just saying “I’d like you to mow the lawn.”

    4. Yasmin Kara-Hanani*

      Yes! I might be oversensitive, but I always bristle at the word “yet” in emails/messages checking on the status of things. It always makes me wonder for a few seconds if my colleague assumes I’m a Sim who will just eating chips and dancing in front of a boom box unless and until someone explicitly prompts me me to do something.

  65. But not the Hippopotamus*

    I will carry a post-it with the question(s) I need of I’m talking to somebody likely to throw a conversation curveball. Then before I leave I can check. It also seems to soften it somehow?

    1. Sparklefizz*

      It’s because when it’s on a post-it, the question comes off as less personal – it is not coming from you but from The Process and you’re not personally judging their answer, you’re just the messenger.

  66. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

    People being vague or giving too much information IS VERY FRUSTRATING! (although I probably do it too sometimes).
    My pet peeve:
    Me: When will x happen?
    Person: Soon.
    (ummm, “soon” could mean 5 minutes or 3 weeks from now, which is it?)

    1. MicroManagered*

      Worse — when they give an estimated range that’s huge. When will X happen? Oh, like 3-6 months… well which is it? Six months is twice as long as three, that’s not an answer!!

      1. metadata minion*

        But sometimes things really do take a widely varying amount of time! If this process genuinely does sometimes take 3 months and sometimes 6, maybe because of factors beyond your control like the availability of contractors (so you can’t easily tell “well, in this case it will take about 5 months”), it maybe a frustrating answer but it’s accurate.

        1. MicroManagered*

          Obviously when it’s accurate, it’s appropriate. (Also the sky is blue and water is wet.)

          Naturally, I’m referring to the times that it’s NOT accurate and clearly lazy communication.

  67. Dana Lynne*

    OMG this used to happen to me ALL THE TIME with two former coworkers. LW, I feel your pain.

    Whether in person or via email, with them I would have to patiently repeat my original question over and over because I would get all kinds of related material on the topic from them, but never the answer to my question.

    I think both of them had this weird reluctance to give an actual answer because they were afraid they would be attacked for their answer. So they had spent decades polishing the technique, hoping the questioner would just go away.

    I never solved it completely and it drove me crazy until the day I retired. You have all my sympathy.

  68. OddyHD*

    I have ADHD and autism, and the struggle is real. Like OP, I tend to ask point-blank questions and, if the other person rambles, to either a) repeat myself or b) forget why I’d asked in the first place and get side-tracked by a new issue/problem/question.

    I tend to write down what I want to ask if it’s important enough- usually as an email or a text- which serves as a visual reminder.

    Also- sometimes it helps to ask, “What should I do?” or “So what’s the next step?”, so that the other person now has to talk about what they need from you instead of focusing on their own issues.

  69. Skippy*

    There are 2 things I’d change in #3 (though neither is rude per se): “I feel like” is not a feeling and makes it about your feelings, and “you didn’t answer my question” could sound confeontational. Better: “to be sure we’re clear,” “just coming back to that question,” etc.

  70. Dido*

    I think the LW needs to learn to read between the lines a bit more. in the first convo, it sounds to me like Bob didn’t have any meetings – he was supposed to, but it was canceled. so I would’ve just followed up with “so just to confirm, you don’t have any other meetings today?” and i agree with Alison about the last convo. the second guy is just annoying though

    1. T4ci3*

      she has an auditory processing disorder and can’t process a long, rambling, indirect response. She explained in that example that she can’t get the info she needs out of it. one of the things she asked for help with is getting a brief, direct response to her question.

    2. Daffy*

      Exactly, I think that example 1 is the same as Example 3. Bill’s answer is “I did have one with Bob but it was canceled” = no. You can follow up with “So just to confirm, you’d be free for the X meeting if I were to throw it on the schedule?” if you want to be really sure.

      If you’re still not sure that sounds like a definitive “no”, let’s say that hypothetically Bill *did* have another meeting scheduled. If he had still responded to your question with “I had one with Bob, but it was canceled.” and then stops talking, but you press him again and it turns out he has a meeting on his schedule with Jerry that he wouldn’t have mentioned, that would have been a level of willful obtuseness that you don’t often encounter in anyone other than e.g. younger siblings trying to be difficult. So if you game out that possibility and realize it sounds ridiculous, you can see why Bill’s answer is a pretty clear “no” assuming Bill is at all reasonable.

      And he and example #3 (the New Jersey hire) don’t seem like they’re being rambling for the sake of it. They’re simultaneously answering your yes/no question and also providing extra context and information that might be helpful or clarifying to you. Michael’s answer in #3 not only provides your no, it heads off you asking that same question about future hires from states that don’t need the onboarding packet.

  72. jess*

    Ohhh, I read “Jersey store” as an example, like a store that sells sports jerseys, I didn’t think it meant the state New Jersey. So I didn’t make the connection that Alison did that related it to Michael’s response about Texas.

  73. Anonny*

    Although I like Allison’s scripts, I think sometimes things get lost in translation and could probably use a more direct follow up.

    Also – Hi OP, I am 44 and was diagnosed with ADHD this year. I also don’t retain information well and have trouble following the conversation thread sometimes.

    I go into any conversation with a written list of questions I need answers to and at the end, I reiterate whatever I think the takeaway is.

    “So, to confirm, you have no appointments today?”
    “So to confirm, I’m going to order 5 teapots?”

    I also use – “unless someone tells me otherwise, I’m going to do X.”

    I don’t do much communication over messaging platforms- but when I do I always open with a friendly remark – “Hey XX, how are you?” – then I wait for a response before asking my question. It is nice and also allows them to dial in. I also have to remember that most people move much slower than I do and that they may be engaged in something else and I just have to wait. If something is time sensitive, I’ll sometimes say – “if I don’t hear back by xx time, I’m going to do yy.” That way I have a plan of action and if something goes wrong, I’ve got a paper trail to account for my actions.

    Hope that helps!

  74. Unable to Answer*

    I apologize in advance because I am the coworker who does not always answer your questions. Thankfully, my AuDHD husband has pointed this out to me (and continues to point it out to me) so I’m working on it. From my perspective, being very specific with your ask or telling me why you’re asking will help. And if I still don’t answer it’s okay to say “thanks, but that didn’t really answer my question.”

  75. cheeks76*

    This is probably an obvious thing at this point but I also have ADHD and difficulty comprehending a point someone is making when it drags on for too long, so if it’s a written thing (especially like a really long, rambling email when I’m in the middle of something else), I’ll put it into chatgpt and ask it to summarize it for me and outline next steps. Then I can go back and read more intentionally to decipher what the answers and make sure it’s accurate. Obviously not as easy to do when speaking face to face with someone but … I agree at that point just following up later on if the answer isn’t clear.

  76. tired designer*

    My boss does this, particularly on the phone. What I do is, once we get off the phone, I message her: “To clarify: we should order X # teapots?” Not a follow up question like “how many should we order”, but a statement she either has to confirm or deny. Or possibly: “I’m not clear on which we decided: X teapots or Y teapots?” Limited options for her to choose from.

  77. Lilian Field*

    It’s nice to see so many other people here who struggle with this problem. I have auditory processing issues due to autism, not ADHD, but I still relate.
    For me: it’s sometimes helpful to break down a problem like this into tiny component parts/skills, and try to figure out where exactly my deficits are. Here are some questions I might ask in your situation:
    1) Am I making my own requests for information clearly enough? Could I be more blunt or directive at the outset of these conversations, by using better “scripts”?
    2) Am I getting distracted by the flow of my colleague’s rambling, so much so that I even forget myself what information to be listening for? If so, are there mood factors or anxiety factors that are making it easier for me to get distracted? For instance, when someone starts to monologue, I am sometimes really anxious about whether or not I will understand everything they are trying to tell me. I can get so anxious that I start trying to hyperfocus on *their* speech and *their* intentions, instead of relaxing and just being mindful about what *I* need. The anxiety becomes a block to active listening. By giving myself permission to focus on what *I* need to learn, instead of what someone else wants to communicate, I can be more efficient in some conversations. (Socially speaking, that’s sometimes appropriate and sometimes not, of course.)
    3) Am I inadvertently using social cues/body language to communicate that I want the person to keep talking, when actually I need them to stop? For instance, am I mindlessly nodding along/saying “mm-hmm,” when I actually be giving the opposite message? What if I stop nodding, stop making affirmative noises, and subtly hold up my hand or a pen to suggest that I need a pause in the flow of talking?
    4) Could I develop a repertoire of polite ways to interrupt? There are good ideas on this thread already. One was, “Let’s get back to the background in a minute, but first, quickly, do you have any meetings this afternoon?” Another is, “Great! Let’s put a pin in that–do you have any meetings this afternoon?” Another is to blame yourself and identify your own needs– “Sorry to send you down the wrong path–I should have said that I’m trying to plan X and Y in the next couple minutes here. Do you have any meetings this afternoon?” etc.
    Etc.
    The nuclear option might be to identify yourself as having auditory processing trouble and get formal accommodations around the issue specifying that other people need to be clear and to the point in answering your questions. On the one hand, these kinds of things can be surprisingly effective, and you can resolve a lot of the social awkwardness here by blaming yourself–“I’m so sorry, I have some auditory processing trouble for reasons too boring to explain; could we start by knocking out the basic details here about the schedule and then zoom back out?” You can also say something like, “Forgive me if I seem rude; I’ve got some auditory processing trouble and I’m not sure if I’ve gotten all the details I need. Did you ever mention whether you’ve got a meeting this afternoon?” And in some cases accommodations will specify that you need to get this information in writing. The downside with these approaches, in my experience, is that you’re taking responsibility for something that might not actually be the result of your disability at all (if the other person is just a rambler/bad communicator/etc.), and over time this approach can get really expensive, as people will start to see you as the source of communication trouble/problems even when it’s really them. But it can be effective in the short term/in a healthy enough workplace.

    1. Lilian Field*

      I thought of something I wanted to add to my own post, so I’ll put it here as a reply to myself. It’s worth noting that many accommodations guidelines for people w/auditory processing trouble just recommend putting as much in writing as possible. That, to me, is probably the most direct solution here and what I should have put first. If at all possible prefer written channels–email or Slack or even text. If need be, tell people that you’ll text them from time to time, even when you’re in the office, just because your auditory processing disorder makes it easier for you to get info that way. If you need formal accommodations around those shifts, so be it; there’s tons of precedent. People might ramble for ten minutes before telling you their schedule but they’re unlikely to write for twenty paragraphs before answering a direct question.

  78. WhiskeyTango*

    It’s also possible that word salad is how some people arrive at the answer (but also get off on tangents.) If you come in and ask me how many teapots and I, legitimately need to think about it, I will process verbally. (I can totally see myself doing that.)

    That isn’t your problem, per se, but if you could see it as someone is thinking out loud to go through an analysis, it might also change how you see the problem.

    It’s not everyone (but would totally be me) and you’d probably need to remind me to answer your dang question, but I think for some people it’s more than just rambling…

    1. Saturday*

      I was thinking about this to. When someone wants a simple answer (we need 8 teapots), they might think the question is also simple, but it isn’t always – people aren’t computers.

      In #2, the answer might really be, “I need more time to think about it,” but he’s talking through why he doesn’t have an immediate answer.

  79. Raida*

    Bullet points are your friend.
    Hold a hand up, and say “Sorry no, I only need [repeat clear question]” and tap your notebook/hold up phone with bullet points on it. And when they have finished talking you say “So the answer is seven. Yes?” so that you never walk away without the last thing you do being verbalising the information you needed.

    And hey, be open with your coworkers about how you’ve found a reason why these things have been a roadblock in the past, and how it has opened up avenues for seeing how other people tackle it.

    Do a preso in a team meeting about how you use bullet points, yes/no if/then formats to be clear and direct and stay on target. Say how it clashes with some organisational tips you’ve tried in the past, and how it meshes with others.

    And be sure to be chatty at other times.

  80. Yasmin Kara-Hanani*

    Re # 3 specifically, you also risk coming off as rude when you allow people 15 minutes or less to respond before you start following up. Other peoples’ workloads and priorities generally won’t align perfectly with yours, and when you pepper people with “just checking” IMs you’re implying that they should. It is frustrating (especially with ADHD) when it takes forever to close the loop on a task as small as “Reach out to So-and-So in the X Department to confirm Y.” But it’s equally frustrating when you’re the reach out-ee and you have to field repeated messages about a task that’s on your radar but that you can’t drop everything and attend to right then and there. So even though things like this truly would take a few minutes in a perfect world, it might help you overall to let go of any expectation that they actually will.

  81. anonymous person*

    I am frankly shocked at how unkind so many commenters are to OP’s coworkers! I think we should be giving OP’s coworkers the same grace we’re giving OP. This is just different communication styles rubbing up against one another. No one has to be in the wrong. OP isn’t the problem and neither is anyone else.

    1. cubone*

      Was looking for this comment, my gosh. It’s fair to have your personal annoyances, but reading all of these, I never once thought “wow, this person is rambling/frustrating/etc.” Humans are messy and unique. I don’t think any of these people are useless (or “caffeinated squirrels” like one comment said???). They’re just… people with thoughts and problems and communication styles?

  82. Sparrow*

    The response about #3 is interesting to me, because when I (autistic) read it, I did come away thinking that Michael did not answer LW’s question at all and that LW was not rude in pointing that out and asking for an actual answer.

    With the final context that Michael had not sent the onboarding package out, I can re-read that message and sort of see how there’s kind of a vaguely implied “no” in there… but also, it does still feel very unclear to me, to the point that I’m genuinely unsure how other people are seeing a clear answer! To unpack how I read it:

    “I’ve only used the onboarding function primarily for the California and Texas locations” contains an immediate contradiction to me: do you *only* or *primarily* use it for the CA and TX locations? If the latter, did you send it in this particular case?

    “Usually, when we already have the employee’s information, the previous accountant would just add them to the system” reads to me like it’s talking about something completely different and not really relevant here (adding employees to an internal system on the employer’s side vs. sending a packet of onboarding information to a new employee for their own reference).

    “I’m working on giving access to the general managers to send it themselves, but I’m still working on it” tells me that the system will be changing at some point in the future, but again, does not actually say anything about one particular new employee who needs onboarding paperwork now.

    I also don’t really see LW’s response as rude—they clearly stated the issue they were having still and clearly re-stated what information they still needed. It doesn’t really read as rude at all to me, and it certainly doesn’t read as demanding!

    1. please enjoy all the comments equally*

      I think the issue is that (assuming LW is in the US) our work culture has become so warped that there can be long-term professional consequences from outright saying “no, I didn’t do that because it isn’t my job.” I’m also an ADHDer, but when I’m in Michael’s shoes – as in, someone asking me if I’ve done something that isn’t within my purview – I also kinda flounder for a way to communicate that they’re asking the wrong person without branding myself as “not a team player.”

      The best way to answer would probably be “I handle Texas and California, but Devon might know who to ask about New Jersey.” But that’s easy to come up with in hindsight, and much harder when you’re in a panic mode trying to thread the needle between “doormat” and “uncooperative.”

  83. Jen*

    One more option that’s helped me with coworkers who don’t always get back to me is giving a default answer in case they don’t reply at all (which sometimes happens). For example:

    Me: Hey Peter, I’m getting ready to order the teapots, I just wanted to verify that nothing’s changed. I plan to order 5 teapots. If you want me to order a different number, please let me know by 4:00 pm tomorrow.

    This way, if Peter never tells me the correct number, I can still proceed with 5 instead of waiting for Peter and risking having higher priorities come along and bury the task while I wait. If 5 was actually the wrong number to order this time, that’s on Peter instead of on me. If 5 was actually the right number to order this time, Peter doesn’t need to spend any time answering me to get 5 ordered.

  84. Heffalump*

    I wrote about this at greater length a while back in the weekend thread, since I was thinking mostly of my personal life. I sometimes find that people will answer a question according to what they think I’m really getting at. It leads to “who’s on first” conversations, which are among my least favorite things. If they’d just answer the question as it stands, things would be fine.

  85. Office Gumby*

    This must be a cultural thing, this waffling on, and the perceived rudeness if LW were to say, “A simple yes or no will do.”

    In Australia, it would not be considered rude to ask for simple answers to what look to be rather straightforward questions.

    1. cubone*

      lol, this reminds me of an Australian coworker who said casually on their 3rd week: “why are all of you Canadians so indirect?” It was perceived VERY rudely by most of the people in the room.

      I didn’t perceive it as rude, but it the bluntness of it was quite surprising to me because I’d never heard anyone say something like that unless they WERE intending to be rude. The Australian colleague was absolutely right (Canadians ARE indirect) but also…. it doesn’t really matter whether it was technically “correct”. If it’s a norm in a culture that communication is more subtle and indirect, someone saying “well, that’s not what I mean by it” is irrelevant.

      Like there are cultures where offering a handshake with your left hand is considered deeply impolite. I could go around offering my left hand and say “it’s just a left hand, it’s no different than my right hand”, and sure, I’d be technically right….. but most likely, everyone would find my behaviour pretty rude, and might start to avoid me if I didn’t adjust to their deeply held cultural belief. It feels sometimes like we have an easier time grasping those physical/tangible cultural norms than communication based ones.

      FWIW, if a colleague said to me “a simple yes or no will do”, I would absolutely perceive rudeness in that because it’s not how I, or anyone I’ve ever worked with, has communicated (unless they were being rude). But I don’t live in Australia, and if I did, I’d have to learn to adjust my communication style. Or accept being misunderstood.

    2. Daffy*

      But if they already gave a yes/no (or in example 3, Michael and the onboarding packet, a “no plus” – a no with extra info about why not for future reference), asking for the word yes or the word no kind of comes across like you’re petulantly unwilling to do your part in the conversation. Conversation is a dance, and if one person demands to be carried around like a floppy sack of flour and won’t move their foot an inch toward the other person, it gets unfun real fast.

  86. FunkyMunky*

    As a word salad person (occasionally?
    !) I think this will help me to be more direct! Veering off and rambling is something that just comes naturally to me. LW, I’m sorry you are encountering our kind so often ;/

  87. PurpleCattledog*

    Focussing on clearer questions will help – and realising when you have been given an answer. 1 sounded like water cooler talk, unless you have a 1 meeting per day rule and yes means they can’t do what you want and no means they can.

    2 I think you did get an answer – Pete isn’t sure because A said 3 and B said 7, and maybe Pete isn’t sure which way to go or doesn’t get to decide. A good follow up would have been should we catch up with boss on how many to order this month or do you want me to stick with 5?

    3 The answer was there – you just didn’t recognise it. Suggestions to confirm that it’s a no would have been the way to go.

    This is something genAI tools can be really helpful with in written communication. You can ask it to reword things to make you clearer while still friendly tone. Draft your response – and ask for a time check. Sometimes a couple different words can really change how an otherwise blunt message comes across.

    Another trick when people start going down a side track is to just say – hang on a sec I’ll get confused if I don’t sort out the order numbers before we get on to tea flavours – then write a note about the tea flavour to come back to. If you’re politely laughing at your own memory most people get it. So long as you do come back to the other topic, and accept if people say that the topics are linked.

  88. K*

    I’m finding myself on the flip side of this, where someone is pressing me for a clear answer, when the situation is nuanced (and I work in human services so nuance and complexity are the norm!)
    “Are we moving forward with X?”
    “Well, X is ultimately the goal but we need to have W and V in place…”
    “So are we moving forward with X, yes or no.”

    1. cubone*

      “…so nuance and complexity are the norm.”

      This is EXACTLY it. OP isn’t doing anything wrong to prefer a different communication style, but in all of the coworker responses, it feels so abundantly clear to me that they are communicating there is nuance and complexity in the answer to OP’s question from THEIR perspective. Maybe they’ve been telling everyone this info over and over, and no one listens or remembers. Maybe, like in your example, they are tired of people insisting on a straightforward answer to X, and never caring about W and V (until they become a problem).

  89. MCMonkeybean*

    With a caveat that because these are not exact replicas of the conversions that took place so I might be off base, I am seeing two different situations here.

    That conversation with Peter sounds beyond absurd and frustrating! If that’s something you run into with him in particular a lot I think you’d need to start being firmer in a way that might occasionally come across as rude but only because he’s being rude by not answering your question, or see if there is someone you can ask instead of him.

    But looking at your examples here, it seems to me that even though they did not use direct phrasing and I get how that could be annoying or confusing–to me in both of those situations they answered your question with “no” without actually using the word no.

    If you ask if someone has a meeting today and they said they did but then it was canceled then they do not have any meetings today.

    If you ask someone if they did something in New Jersey and they said they’ve only ever done it in California and Texas then the answer to your question was no.

    I have ADHD so I get how that can make communication more difficult and it’s definitely something I’ve had to work on and have gotten feedback on over the years. (I use a lot of exclamation points in my emails now because I was told I came across as rude over email sometimes many years ago). But I do think part of your issue is on your end and needing to practice taking the substantive information from what people say to you.

    1. ADHDFox*

      OP has an additional disability (APD) ALONGSIDE their ADHD which makes extracting information from words harder than JUST ADHD does. Practicing the skill does not really help. I have the same two conditions and in certain situations – like the ones OP describe – they literally work against each other.

    1. Heffalump*

      Are you referring to Michael? All we know about Peter Gibbons is that he’s the new employee in NJ.

  91. Spooz*

    People love to correct people more than they love to answer questions.

    “Bob, I’m going to book a meeting in conference room 4 at 3pm, unless you need it then?”
    “Jim, I’m going to order 5 teapots this time, same as last time, unless we need something different?”

    You can still use a question intonation.

    1. The Funcooker*

      Yes, this! Sometimes if I have no idea what they said in their word salad, I’ll say, “OK, just to make sure I understand, the situation is XYZ…?” even when I know for certain they didn’t say XYZ, so we at least have a starting point of giving them something to correct (and hopefully providing me with the information I need).

  92. mad scientist*

    After reading the answer and all the comments I’m feeling confused. It still seems clear that the OP is dealing with people who are either oddly terrible communicators or perhaps even messing with her and avoiding her direct question, which she needs to do her job? I would be frustrated also.

    Why can’t she be direct and ask them to answer her question? Why is that so bad? Why doesn’t she need to couch her question in lots of different softpedaling and ask it multiple ways and hope they answer it?

    I do understand that question 1 isn’t specific enough but the question about how many teapots to order is specific. If the person she asked doesn’t know, they should say so. If the person she asked who needs to “process” out loud in order to figure out how many teapots to order should tell her “I don’t know let me think about it and get back to you” – they shouldn’t hold her hostage while blathering at her.

    The suggested methods would truly drive me mad. Where do these people work?!? Is this corporate America? I worked as a scientist for 30 years. We never did this! – I can’t imagine how anything got done in the business world if this is how you all do things….!

    1. Gibberish*

      OMG, at Old Job, the HR lady would as Professional Obfuscator. She talked a mile a minute, and when you asked her a question, she would talk about anything EXCEPT the topic at hand. It got to the point where I would stare at her, blink back to reality, and directly tell her “I don’t even remember the question that I asked you.” and walk away. Then I thought, perhaps I should be professional. So I had to learn to just cut her off and repeat/reword my question. Rude? Maybe. But to me being held captive to such a time suck was even more rude.

  93. Definitely not me*

    On the “number of teapots to order” question, another thing you could do is offer a solution and ask if that solution is acceptable. Often, people appreciate when you suggest a compromise. Something like this: “Some people think 10 is too many, but I’m also hearing five is too few. How about I order 8 this time?” (then give a gentle deadline) “I’ll place the order at 4:00 pm tomorrow, so if you feel strongly that 8 isn’t enough, you’ll need to let me know before then how many to add. Thanks so much!”

  94. cubone*

    I feel like I’m going crazy, but there is such a lack of empathy in these comments for OP’s coworkers. I can see how reading these scripts is a bit frustrating, but all of them seem like incredibly normal ways that human beings communicate.

    And before anyone says it: I quite literally have both of the same disorders as OP. I am truly NOT judging them for struggling with this – it’s frustrating! They can be frustrated. But why not start from a place of recognizing that they don’t know Bob or Michael or Peter’s experience, and not assume they are useless/bad/just looove to dump irrelevant info on OP. They communicate differently than OP. Neither are in the wrong.

    As an example:
    “Me: Hey, Bill, do you have any meetings scheduled today?
    “Bill: I was going to have a meeting with Bob but he canceled on me. They are scheduling way too many meetings for me I can’t get any work done blah blah blah blah…

    At this point my brain gets overwhelmed with all the unnecessary information and I walk away. And 20 minutes later, I realize they never answered my question.”

    It is unnecessary information to YOU. Bob feels it is necessary information. That’s all this is. Maybe there is lots of other proof that Bob is a poor, rambly communicator but this example isn’t proof in itself.

    Sure, it can be annoying – you didn’t ask for a breakdown of everything related to the topic of onboarding packages. But I don’t think Michael is a bad person or a terrible communicator or a “caffeinated squirrel” (like someone here said?!) because he thinks the answer to your question has complexities. Maybe anytime Michael says “no, I haven’t sent it”, he gets a thousand questions why, so he’s learned that he might as well anticipate the next likely question. “Anticipate the next question” is a customer service tactic that I’ve heard in multiple sales/CS trainings! It’s not absurd or horribly passive aggressive. It’s just… a communication approach. OP prefers a different one and that’s fine.

    But it feels worth mentioning that the opposite is frustrating too: I had a boss who was so direct that it made it incredibly difficult to communicate with her. She’d ask a Y/N question because she felt there was a clear Y/N answer, but there was a lot of nuance or elements that made the Y/N answer feel incomplete at best, and potentially harmful at worse. But anything you shared that wasn’t Y/N was shut down, so you stop sharing any of that info out of fear of a “that’s not what I asked” email. Then, a week later, that nuance and complexity becomes a problem, and you’re chastised for not telling her about it in advance.

    But hey, maybe I’m just a terrible communicator and overcaffeinated squirrel, hated by all their colleagues because I love nothing more than to annoy them by refusing to answer their oh-so-simple direct questions, and any info about my work that isn’t doesn’t explicitly answer the question at hand is useless and irrelevant.

    1. LL*

      Maybe, but there’s a whole thread under the first or second comment (I think) about how OP isn’t communicating their questions very clearly either. And IMO, OP needs to be clearer to get clearer answers. Or ask what they actually want to know.

  95. Susie QQ*

    I feel for OP here, I have the same kind of frustration with my co-workers, and even my partner!

    I sometimes wish I could channel Judge Judy! When people do this to her, she shuts it down quick.

    JJ: When did you start living with the defendant?
    Plaintiff: I moved into their apartment, and they owe me money because…
    JJ: The date?
    Plaintiff: I’m getting to it, I just wanted to explain…
    JJ: I need a MONTH. DAY. and YEAR.

  96. Hannah K*

    I feel this all deep in my soul.

    One thuing I have found helpful is saying back the answer I think they may be trying to give me. “So, just to be clear, you did NOT send that onboarding packet.” “So 7 teapots is a good amount, then.” If it’s wrong, they’ll usually be much more direct in correct your facts.

  97. sb51*

    I feel like the audio processing issues part keeps getting lost in the comments; perhaps because more commenters have experience with the other neurodivergence (and just communication styles differences). Audio processing issues often mean that all one can do in the middle of a conversation is hang on and try to at least not say anything inappropriate. For me, personally, it’s also hard to actually form short-term memories of any decisions made that way, so even if the LW has gotten someone to give an answer after some back and forth, it might be hard to pull it out of the conversation. You know when you do something your laptop isn’t really powerful enough to do, and the extra-extra cooling fan kicks on loudly and all your other apps start to sag, and you’re wondering if the whole thing is going to crash? That’s what the brain of someone with audio processing issues is doing in these meandering conversations; slowly overheating and failing at doing things that are normally easy.

    So: it won’t solve the person who waffles over text, but LW: stop talking out loud to your coworkers for anything where you need an answer. Save the hallway chitchat for when you actually have the bandwidth/desire to socialize a bit, and the answers don’t actually matter. For anything that matters: IM them. You will be so much less burnt out, even if they wafflegab at you, because you’re reading it, not having to try to piece a puzzle box full of sounds into words only to find that you’ve assembled a useless word salad. And you’ll have a much greater opportunity to put the pleasant niceties in that will keep you from sounding rude, because you’re struggling less with the medium. And then when they still don’t give you a straight answer, you’ll have a record of it (in case you need to prove it to someone or your brain just helpfully deletes the last two hours of memories as “eh, nothing much happened”) and you can hopefully laugh at it rather than stress.

  98. also adhd*

    I think the real problem is that your coworkers are all hellbent on derailing every conversation as hard as possible… and you’re worried about seeming rude if you stop that, so you go along with it and hope you can steer the train back onto the tracks somehow in a bit. Which is clearly not working. So the thing to remember here is that THEY are the ones being rude! You asked a clear question! They didn’t answer! That’s something you have the right to be mildly displeased about! It’s not rude to keep things on track when you’re working.
    My method for this stuff is to just… not tolerate the derailment. I let them word vomit unrelated nonsense at me, and then I just flatly repeat my question. No engagement with the fluff. If they don’t answer it the second time I ask, then I repeat the question again, now a bit slower and with some pauses, to make it clear that I’m getting annoyed. If they dodge the third question, THEN I’ll stop repeating… because at that point I change it to just “So… you don’t know X?”, or “So you haven’t done Y then?”. That always gets an answer, and honestly I usually don’t hit that point.
    Basically, just stonewall them. They can throw as many word salads at you as they want, but they can’t make you eat them.

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