I spoke with an editor in NYC this morning. Funny how easy it is to forget how the rest of the world communicates. Here, pretty much any phone call - even business calls - start with an exchange of “how are yous” and friendly conversation. My NYC conversation opened with a direct question related to an article that’s scheduled to run in August. No “hi, I’m the editor working on your story” or “how’s the weather?” Just straight to business.
She wasn’t unfriendly at all, and actually we worked into a friendly conversation. But the order in which it happened seemed quite foreign to me. People here - except for visitors - wouldn’t dream of being so direct.
one gets right down to it, the other has to do a family tree. Which isn’t so bad until i realize *I’ve* called him…
Shez said,
April 16, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
I miss directness like that. I now live in the American South and the mandatory small talk drives me balmy. I don’t want to know how most people’s uncle’s great aunt’s toenails are doing. I just want to know what you want. We changed banks because our banker refused to communicate by email or short telephone calls. She wanted face to face, “Southern” exchanges. Drove me quite batty. I just wanted to do banking, not shoot the breeze.