How to not be rude when I need to stop talking to you

March 8, 2018 9:33 PM

I have a hard time ending conversations in professional settings, especially when it comes to clients (this applies to friends, too, but I can at least limit conversations with them to text) and especially on the phone. When it appears that they're going to keep talking (like this evening, for an hour and a half until 11pm!), I lie to myself that it's fine to let them keep talking because they're nice and I want them to like me.

What I really want to do is elicit information X and Y and say goodbye. But I don't want to interrupt them or make them feel like the conversation is cold and transactional. I know there's a middle ground where I lead the conversation and interrupt the other person when they veer off-topic. I can maybe do this a few times if I try, but if they are insistent on keeping the conversation going, it just wears me down and I give up and just say 'mm-hmm' every so often.

What tips or tricks can I use to shape a conversation's length/topic? How do I get myself to interrupt someone, when I'm afraid that it's going to alienate them? I could lie, and say I have to be somewhere else when things look bad, but I think learning the art of being firm would be a useful skill for me to have.

posted by thesockpuppet to Human Relations (26 answers total)

I think you’re on the right track. People who shape conversations well often are clear about the amount of time that they have to give someone. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to tell someone that you have only a minute left (or whatever time you think the convo *should* take) and you want to be sure you handle their needs before you have to go. In fact you can start conversations that way. You can start a call with someone by saying “I had five minutes available, so I thought I would call and ...”

As someone who is more of an extrovert, I would appreciate feedback like this. Sometimes I walk away from a conversation wondering if I talked an intovert’s ear off and they were silently pleading for me to go.

Certainly this is easier in professional settings than it is with friends. Part of friendship is listening, even when you may be over it. But the expectation there is that they listen to you when they’re over it. But if you have a friendship where you feel like it’s unbalanced and you need to cut them off, you can do the same thing as above. Go in to conversations with them with a set amount of time at the start. You don’t have to lie and make up something else that you have to do afterwards. Just let them know you’re only available for 30 minutes or whatever. I’m sure every Mefite introvert is familiar with that trick. Good luck!
posted by greermahoney at 10:05 PM on March 8, 2018

For chatty work people it's worth it to lie.

"Hello, how are you, (short friendly chitchat)
I have to get off the phone by (time) because (made-up excuse) but I was eager to speak with you today so we could discuss (topic). Is now a good time for you?
(Discuss topic.)
(Digress into one tangent, just to feel friendly.)
Great! I need to let you go right now but let's touch base again when (timeframe), does that work for you?
I'm glad I got to hear your insights- thank you! Byeeeeeee"
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:25 PM on March 8, 2018

Not only am the guy who drops into the offices of friends, but I like it, to a point, when they drop in on me in my office. Except that sometimes, I start to feel the heat from work not done, obligations to customers (Etc.) not fulfilled, and the unpleasant feelings that brings me helps me say to my visitors, "I'm sorry, I could talk all day with you but I have stuff I have to do. Can I catch you later?" And on one guy that didn't work with, my manager, I would say "Really man, I can't talk anymore, and I need silence to work on this."

I made it clear that when we're in my office, I can talk for so long, but interruptions from the phone or email take priority over bullshitting. If I caught a phone-call while chatting with 3 people, I would shoo them out so they couldn't feel they could just wait out the phone. (I usually made a judgment call on the likely length of the phone call before doing so.)

Did it give me a reputation for being prickly about noise? Yeah, somewhat. (There was also some passive-aggressive door-shutting by me when coworkers talked noisily outside my office.) But I'm a warm guy to my friends, harmless to strangers, and reasonably social in a social context. As long as you aren't begrudging someone else for doing their job instead of shooting the shit with you, it's unjust for them to be upset by the same treatment. Go ahead and be rude to anyone who is like that, and genial but firm to the ones who can take your "go away!" in the spirit in which it is offered: "I have to frikken work!"

As for clients, some of whom like to hang on the phone forever, I make up having a meeting. It turns them to the idea of working on the problem themselves for a while. The meeting is usually lunch, a bathroom break, or just another customer who's blowing up voicemail.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:04 PM on March 8, 2018

1. Don't take business calls at 9:30pm.
2. Have you seen that bank commercial with the "Okaaay then!" grandma playing Jenga or whatever?
3. Start looking for natural breaks sooner than later in the conversation. Take any opportunity to get off the phone, and take control of the conversation. "Anything else? OK."
posted by rhizome at 11:07 PM on March 8, 2018

There's chatty people, and then there's people who Will. Not. Shut. Up. The second type are, frankly, kind of oblivious to the point where you can be kind of shockingly rude and they don't notice. Either that or everybody treats them this way, so they consider it normal. And I mean shockingly rude like I just blatantly interrupt them in the middle of a sentence, say "Hey, I gotta go" and then either hang up the phone or just walk out the door if we're actually in meatspace. I know that if you're a woman you've had some socialization that may make that rude directness very uncomfortable, and that there are cultural expectations and repercussions that wouldn't necessarily apply to a guy, but still . . . . There are some people who you can just shut down, and they're fine with that.

Seconding lying, which is one of the reasons taking business calls @ 9:30 pm is a bad idea - you can't fake "hey my boss just stuck his head in & wants to talk to me/I've got a meeting right now/I've got another call coming in."

I've found that a good way to signal "this conversation is almost over" with chatty clients is to start to run down a list of the bullet points of the conversation - "Just double-checking we're on the same page here" - which puts the conversation back on track, seems to remind them that this is a business call, and once both parties have confirmed that everything that needed to be covered has been covered it's a fairly natural ending point to the conversation.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:26 PM on March 8, 2018

At work, I’ve never had a bad reaction on the phone to, “David, I think I’m gonna have to crack on I’m afraid.” It always seems to stop people in their tracks without causing offence, I think because it communicates you’re too busy to talk to them, without making it about them.
posted by penguin pie at 1:15 AM on March 9, 2018

At the end of conversations, people use common phrases to signal that the talk is coming to a close. For example, "anyway..." and summarising expressions like "so the bottom line is" or "so what you're saying is". The thing is, you can use them whenever you just want to end the conversation, not just at the natural end. It's like a magic spell just falls on the other person - they know the end has come, but usually only on a sub-conscious level. And that makes it much easier to finish and say goodbye. (I like having fun with this trick right at the very beginning of conversations!)

When you're having a conversation in person, you can use your body language to do a similar thing by stepping away from the other person, turning away ever so slightly or perhaps gathering your things, like a coat.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 2:10 AM on March 9, 2018

I plan my days in half-hour increments (agency life, it works for me!) and have become very comfortable in telling people, in a friendly tone, “hey, I have about 5 minutes before my next meeting, can we talk about X before I have to let you go?”

Or, for coworkers, “being mindful of our time, we have about 10 minutes left before the end of the hour, and we still need to cover points 4, 5 and 6” to redirect the conversation.

I’ll happily keep a friendly chat going longer, or will keep talking if it’s an important conversation with a client, but being super comfortable with setting these boundaries has absolutely saved my sanity.
posted by third word on a random page at 3:34 AM on March 9, 2018

Yes to body-language (or equivalent verbal) cues. A few times, I've been able to bring a rambling / endless meeting to a close just by sitting up straight in my chair, closing my notebook & looking around the table in an "anything else, just before we go?" kind of way. Others are sometimes waiting for those signals too, so all you have to do is provide the seed. If one or two others take your lead & start to pack up their stuff too, the meeting is officially over.

Doesn't work every time. Sometimes, they just want to keep on talking forever. Then, I wait until 2mins before some whole-number time of day, and then say "sorry, I have to duck out for my 10 o'clock meeting" or whatever. If you know it's going to be one of those endless sessions, you can say at the outset that you only have x mins, because you have to join a y o'clock call.

I heard a story once about a lady who always put on her coat when she heard the front door bell. If she opened it & found it was someone she liked, she could say "oh, how lovely to see you! I just got back from [whatever]". If it was someone she didn't like, she could say "oh, how kind of you to pop round! So sorry, I'm just about to [post a letter | nip to the shop | walk the dog | catch the bus], I'll see you next time, byeee".
posted by rd45 at 3:37 AM on March 9, 2018

That lady should be making all my decisions! Personally, I end a conversation by going, oh is that the time, I mustn't keep you any longer..
posted by Jubey at 3:53 AM on March 9, 2018

I would highly recommend, if you can, a facilitation course. There are tangible skills for driving a conversation that you can learn.

One important one is - HAVE. AN. AGENDA. Create it if you have to, it does not have to be formal but just a confirmation that "when these topics are complete, this call is over." I find 95% of meetings that are too long or unfocused did not start from a common premise and list of topics. Having an agreement ahead of time works to get you back on track and off the call.

Tactically, I also create false deadlines - i.e., at the beginning of a call I say something like "I apologize but I only have 45 minutes for this call but if we don't get what we need today, I can be available again in the very near future." If people get off track, I often say things like "listen, I could chat all day but I know your time is valuable" to get back on course.

But yeah, do a facilitation course - even online via YouTube. You will get a lot of skills and tricks for running meetings that will save you oodles of time in the future.
posted by notorious medium at 4:14 AM on March 9, 2018

As a bonus, once you get a reputation as someone who keeps track of the time, there's a subset of similarly-introverted people who will want to meet with you, because they know you will respect the agreed-on length and they won't need to do any the above tactics themselves. These will be incredibly productive meetings.
posted by Mogur at 4:15 AM on March 9, 2018

I have a friend who starts almost all of his business calls with, "So glad you called. Gotta tell you my battery is dying so if we get cut off, I will call you back when I can. What's up?" That forces the other party to get to the point. Whenever a call starts to drag on or digress, he simply hangs up mid sentence as if his battery actually died. People soon are trained to get to the point with him and stay on point. He rarely has a call for more than 7 minutes unless it is preplanned to last a certain time.
posted by AugustWest at 5:19 AM on March 9, 2018

Another point to consider is what expectations you're creating in your clients. If you sometimes, when it's convenient for you or you're feeling chatty, talk on much longer than needed to conduct your business with them, it shouldn't surprise you if they sometimes do the same. I was taught early in my career that one should be cordial to clients but not friendly, which meant that small talk at the outset of a call was good but talking about things you would discuss with a friend was to be avoided (and evaded, if the client was being too nosy).
posted by DrGail at 5:45 AM on March 9, 2018

if they are insistent on keeping the conversation going, it just wears me down and I give up and just say 'mm-hmm' every so often.

Exactly, there is a matrix of strategies here that is useful based on a few things (in my world)

- Is persona normal chatty or is person not going to stop talking unless I intervene? Because soundguy99 is right, people who don't notice you're checked out of the conversation are being quite rude and it is okay to be a little more forceful in extracting yourself from the talk.
- Is this work or social? And this is tricky because sometimes work stuff can be both and sometimes friends want to talk about work, but I think you have differing tactics depending on the setting.

So this happens to me a lot and what i finally got out of it was that I am letting my own personal sense of etiquette (interrupting is rude, unilaterally ending a conversation is rude) get in the way of actually advocating for myself when someone else is trampling my boundaries. Really, most people are okay on the phone and don't do this "Now I am going to talk for an hour" stuff. So make a mental outline of how much time you have and Stick To It because your time is important too. And if someone doesn't like you because you are doing this, once you're pretty sure you're being mannerly about it, that's sort of on them. So then work on mannerly.

Because hey we all know people who do this poorly. "Um, yeah, uh huh. Look I HAVE TO GO. SEE YOU" but also people who do this well "Hey it's been great talking to you but I have to __________ now. Let's talk again soon/check in next week." Aim towards the latter. It's also good to own this problem. Even if that person is sort of droning on, it's on you to get the result that you want out of the conversation, not to just sit there thinking "I dislike this"

Remember, you can always make a boundary and decide to extend it. So saying you have a half hour for a phone call and having it go 45 min is a lot better than leaving it open-ended and having it be 90 min.
posted by jessamyn at 6:13 AM on March 9, 2018

A recap can be great, it's the Conclusions and Next Steps slide in your nonexistent powerpoint.
The phone call in general is for a particular purpose, I'm assuming. And they're off on some tangent that isn't social but it way more detail than you need, or have digressed to some social detail.
1. Acknowledge what they've been saying. "Yeah, that software implementation sounds tricky" or "Wow, that sounds like a great vacation, I hope your husband likes it"
2. And without pausing for breath or letting them respond to your response, continue talking about what you need to talk about. You could add a pleasantry (like "This is great but I'd better wrap things up") or you could just keep moving. (note, no pause for breath after pleasantry either. You're not looking for their acceptance of your stated schedule.)
3. Summarize what you learned from this conversation, and/or go down your list of what you/they needed to accomplish. "You needed an update on X, so I explained about Y and Z, and you said you'd talk to Larry about Z."
4. State what's going to happen next - when you'll talk again, what you and/or they are going to do and by when. "So you'll talk to Larry this week, I'll email you that file, and we'll talk again on Tuesday."
5. It will be clear to them that this is The End, but you both now tack on a pleasantry. "Great talking with you, have a good weekend"

You may need to cycle through the recap more than once if they feel the need to tack things on, but this generally flows pretty smoothly.
posted by aimedwander at 7:06 AM on March 9, 2018

As others have stated above, the #1 thing is to communicate your needs to other people. Schedule conversations for specific periods of time when possible ("30 min call to discuss X,Y,Z").

I guess one thing I'd add in terms of terminating the conversation is that one way to avoid seeming rude is to remind folks of your time limits *before* you have to go, not *when*. It shows that you are an active participant in a mutually respectful dialogue.

Wait for a somewhat natural break and say: "Hey, really sorry to interrupt you, but I need to hop off in about 5 minutes, so I just wanted to [circle back to | make sure we touch on | reach a decision about ] [whatever]"

That way, when you say "Awesome. I gotta run, but let's talk again Tuesday," they won't feel like they are being cut off abruptly.
posted by voiceofreason at 7:31 AM on March 9, 2018

So I have to do this a LOT because I'm a therapist, my coworkers are naturally really chatty, and I also have to frequently end convos with clients. Here are the things that work for me:

Letting people know exactly how much time we have left, for example: "So I'm seeing that we have about 10 minutes left, anything else you'd like me to know before we have to end?"

Same for phone calls - "So glad that I caught you at your desk, I have about 5 minutes before I have a client to meet with."

A client that is still talking a lot at the end of a sesh: "You know that sounds really important to you. I'm going to make a note that we'll start with that topic next time I see you. Have a really good day and I'll see you soon." [opens door for them]

Chatty coworkers: "I wish we had a lot longer to talk! But I do have some things that I have to get to in the next hour."

If you just really have to cut the convo off: "I'm so glad to have caught up with you/gotten your feedback etc, but I do have to sign off right now, I'll catch you soon."

I think that setting really clear expectations about how much time you're able to give something is the key. Also, it is okay to get comfortable cutting people off. As long as you're respectful when doing it, I find that people understand that everyone is busy and everyone has a lot to do.
posted by fairlynearlyready at 9:13 AM on March 9, 2018

Slightly tangential but a suggestion on the green that to drop a call hard without offending is to do it as you are speaking. So "...as I said have to cut" <click> is least likely to cause offense. Seems effective so far.
posted by sammyo at 9:37 AM on March 9, 2018

+1 to what Rhizome said. Late calls are going to be difficult to beg off for "another meeting." That said, after a half hour of non-business topics on a late impromptu call, I would cut in with "Hey ----, It's been a long day and I need to unwind before putting my head on the pillow. Anything you want to pick up again tomorrow some time? Let me look at my calendar...."
posted by SoundInhabitant at 10:46 AM on March 9, 2018

How do I get myself to interrupt someone, when I'm afraid that it's going to alienate them?
So, this is what you need to address. In my experience a friendly polite firm statement that you need to end a call is not going to upset anyone unless there is some other dysfunction going on n the relationship.

I usually say something along the lines of "I need to finish up here. So anyway.. " and then either summarize the important point/action item or talk about when I'll talk to them next. In either case, I'm telegraphing the relationship is continuing forward even if this call is ending.

I have one close family member who has a lot going on and I want to make sure I'm supporting her (but sometimes she goes on and on) so i will just say more bluntly, "We've been talking for a while, are you OK ending the call here?" Usually she is Ok finishing up at that point, if she isn't, she lets me know and I stay on longer because I care about her and I know things are tough. When I do this, I know she is just a little hurt that I can't be infinitely available but she is adult enough to understand and frankly if I didn't, I would burn out and that it would be quite a bit worse for both of us.

Bottom line: don't be afraid to be politely firm, most people can handle it just fine.
posted by metahawk at 10:50 AM on March 9, 2018

In extreme cases, it can be helpful to drop in something along the lines of, "now- my phone is about to die, so please don't freak out if I suddenly disappear." And then perhaps at some point, when you cannot take it anymore, you just hang up and then deal with the fallout later.
**I MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE DONE THIS IN THE PAST. **
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 11:46 AM on March 9, 2018

Agree with those saying to summarize your conversation. I follow this by asking if they need anything else from me. Basically: "so your question was X and my opinion is Y. Does that answer your question sufficiently?" If not, then I get to redirect the conversation back to the point. If the answer is yes, then that's usually when the person realizes what I'm doing and thanks me and hangs up/ walks away. If they still don't get it then I just have to be like okay great, glad I could help you, but I have to get back to what I was doing. Bye!

It took a lot of time and practice to be effective at this.
posted by robotdevil at 11:55 AM on March 9, 2018

I will say things along the lines of "it seems like we're repeating ourselves now so I'm going to break the cycle and end this call" or "I'm sorry but I don't have any more time to discuss this" and then end the call/conversation, or at least move on to the next thing.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:11 PM on March 9, 2018

I usually let them go for a minute or two and wait for a slight natural pause then jump in with, "Hey, I'm really sorry to cut you off, but I have to get X done right now. Let's pick this up again tomorrow."

One thing I've found about chatty people is that they are often used to being cut off and seemingly don't mind if it's done politely.
posted by slogger at 12:43 PM on March 9, 2018

‘I have a hard stop at X’ is meeting kryptonite.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:48 PM on March 9, 2018