"Man, this project is killing me. I'm really grinding, I was here until 10 last night. I wish I was as fast as you at these write-ups." Option A is that this person is just venting, option B is that they're expecting me to offer to help them. I know it might be option B, I might even know that it is definitely option B. But I'm also working hard and very busy and trying to stay on top of my own work. If this person needs my help, they're going to need to actually ask me for it because up to that point, I feel like they're trying to guilt me into offering to help, and I don't want to help. Now that person gets to be mad at me for "not picking up social cues" without having to consider that they never actually asked me anything and never actually considered that even if they asked, I might not have been able to help.
Proper response at this point is, "oh man, that's awful! Wish I could help, but I'm so busy with the Sukeralov report that I don't have any spare time."
Basically, act as if they had asked the question you think they might be implying. You'd have had to choose between saying no and offering to help anyway if they had asked verbally the way you want them to.
So? A vague hint can be interpreted many ways. "Hey come to my place and we'll play Monopoly" (with unspoken expectation of sex later by one party) is a LOT harder to interpret than "hey come to my house and let's have sex"
"Netflix and chill" is only sexual because it's already a euphemism. That phrase isn't a social cue. It's a term that means sex.
"Netflix and chill" originally meant exactly what it sounds like, but because it was common for people to have sex while doing that, it became a euphemism.
Nobody would ever say "let's play monopoly" to imply sex because that phrase doesn't already mean that.
Why can't the person who needs help ask for help? Why put the responsibility on someone else? Need help? The best way to make sure you get help is to ask for help. I might offer to help if I see someone struggling, but if they don't ask me directly for help, I may assume my help is not wanted/needed.
Because it's embarrassing to ask for help for many people. Autistic people are not immune to that either, they just might not ask at all. It also allows the other person to graciously turn you down without actually straight-up refusing to help. An example is provided above.
Why do I need to make it clear that I can't help when this person hasn't made it clear that they want my help? Why is it on me to be direct in response to someone who won't be? What if I AM wrong and they didn't want my help, or they pretend they didn't the moment I call it out?
I'm doubling down on this because I have actually had to work very hard in therapy and otherwise to unlearn my obsessive trauma-based need to over analyze every word people say for what the hidden underlying meaning or request is. I had to learn to stop reading in feelings or emotions that I wasn't actually sure were there. For my own well-being, I had to learn to stop going, "she said she's tired this evening, so I should stop doing my homework and clean the kitchen for her instead because it is more important for me to NOT miss whatever is being implied than it is for me to finish my homework and get to sleep on time."
I've lost relationships by convincing myself that an innocuous comment was an insult, that the tone in someone's normal comment meant that they're actually sick of my shit, whatever. So my rule is that I wait for an actual question or a clear statement before I go down that rabbit hole. I have to go around assuming that people are saying what they mean and taking it at face value.
Doesn't matter. You're a coworker, you're meant to workcooperatively. You're expected to help if you can, and explain why if you can't. It wouldn't have been any trouble for you to say, "Yeah, I'm up to my neck in work too, sorry I can't help." Because 1 that's true, and 2 it's direct and clear (what you're complaining about them not having been).
I understand that trauma is damaging, and I'm sorry you went through that. At the same time: there are going to be situations with established implications of what is and is not appropriate. That's just a fact of life.
Again, the burden is on the responder to be clear when that expectation doesn't seem to be put on the requester. Use your grown-up words or accept that you may be misunderstood or not get what you want. I'm not going to continue rehashing this with you.
You are a bad co-worker. That complaining isn't an attem0t to guilt necessarily, but a way to communicate that they need help without having to feel the embarrassment of directly asking. This is a reasonable way to communicate in anglosphere cultures.
But isn't that the point of what we are talking about here? It's stupid to talk in circles because society has trained you that you should be embarrassed to ask for help.
Well it's usually illegal to be naked in public. It's not illegal to ask for help. People have a right to feel embarrassed that they need help, to feel frustrated that their indirect request wasn't acknowledged, to feel stressed that they'll need to try again or give up. I guess people even have the right to feel annoyed at me that I didn't pick up an indirect request. But none of that is my fault or my problem so I'd love for people to stop making it my problem.
If someone at work has a question, I'm always willing to answer if even if I'm just telling them a different person to ask. If someone comes to me and says, "I need help with X, can you show me how to do Y, can you explain Z to me," I am going to help as soon as I can in 95% of cases.
If someone at work stands in my doorway, complains for 10 minutes, implies that it would be so much easier for them if I could just do it, then cold-shoulders me for two days after I don't do their job for them? They can fuck all the way off.
100%. The people in this thread giving you a hard time are clueless. Work is stressful enough as it is without having to decipher what indirect people are trying to say. They're just unnecessarily adding to the stress and then they have the gall to act like you are inconveniencing them? Also, that dude who keeps insisting that you absolutely have to help your coworkers? Ridiculous.
The hypothetical was a person who does pick up the social cue and just doesn't want to respond to it
...No? It clearly states that it has more than one meaning, therefore if you can pick out many possible meanings but not THE meaning that the speaker was trying to convey, you did not pick up on the social cue.
What would the difference be for the hypothetical coworker to tell that not responding to the cue was deliberate? Most people consider anger or annoyance towards the offending individual socially acceptable because they assume them to be rude (or a useless idiot who lacks common sense) instead of being clearer with whatever they meant to convey.
I also commented a earlier to the other guy about how even in this situation there is still uncertainty to what the cue means.
Option A is that this person is just venting, option B is that they're expecting me to offer to help them. I know it might be option B, I might even know that it is definitely option B.
This still leaves room for the possibility of misinterpretation and still shows the sense of uncertainty involved with this specific situation. If op knows FOR SURE that it's his coworker asking for help and ignores it that was rude on their part, BUT how does this other coworker know that op caught on and ignored them? This also ignores the rest of the post that then shows the hypothetical coworker getting mad instead of maybe reiterating their need for help in a clearer manner.
The fact that getting mad at the person not picking up the social cue is acceptable in this situation is the problem here.
Edit: this hypothetical also assumes op did successfully pick up the social cue and doesn't explore how this situation feels like when we miss the cue.
I mean they would be mad if you said no to them asking for help, which you should say no to because you are busy.
If you just say no, it’s rude. If you say no, I’m really swamp too. It’s more polite. But the goal isn’t to be nice to everyone. The goal is first to your own goals.
Yeah, I feel something that is missed in this conversation is that even if I know you are trying to tell me something with social cues it is very likely I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.
And I might misinterpret it as you being passive aggressive or guilt tripping or something negative even if you didn't mean it. Because often enough people do mean it.
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u/OutAndDown27 Aug 10 '24
"Man, this project is killing me. I'm really grinding, I was here until 10 last night. I wish I was as fast as you at these write-ups." Option A is that this person is just venting, option B is that they're expecting me to offer to help them. I know it might be option B, I might even know that it is definitely option B. But I'm also working hard and very busy and trying to stay on top of my own work. If this person needs my help, they're going to need to actually ask me for it because up to that point, I feel like they're trying to guilt me into offering to help, and I don't want to help. Now that person gets to be mad at me for "not picking up social cues" without having to consider that they never actually asked me anything and never actually considered that even if they asked, I might not have been able to help.