First person, third person

January 1, 2022 3:43 PM

Long time ago I had a boss who gave instructions by saying "I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do that, then I'll do this other thing" and I found it confusing until I realized what he meant was he wanted me to do this, then that, then the other thing.

On Friday, when one of my regular clients was giving me a task, he explained that he was going to do this, in such a way, and then he was going to do that, and I listened and finally said, "Hang on, what you mean is you want me to do this, then that, correct?" and he said "yes" as if it was nothing.

Is this, you know, a thing? These two men are from different backgrounds and have nothing in common, so it's not a cultural or language quirk. (They were both speaking English with me.)

Is this a way parents speak to children? What is it?

posted by zadcat to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

I have only encountered this once in my life, I was in my second week at a job and asked a manager if he had everything he needed for his upcoming team meeting. He said yes, that he would be in the conference room for 4 hours and added "we're having sandwiches."

Imagine my surprise when the meeting day rolled around and I got yelled at for not ordering sandwiches for his majesty et al. It caused a major dust up. I didn't even feel bad though. You want me to do something, ask me to do it.

I should note this guy had major entitlement issues in almost every arena.
posted by phunniemee at 3:51 PM on January 1, 2022 [17 favorites]

It seems weird to me too (and entitled). Maybe it’s like when some people order food in restaurants, and instead of asking for what they want (may I have a burger), they instead declare “I’ll have a burger”, to which I always want to say, “well you’ll have whatever that person serves you, so maybe ask nicely”.

Maybe it’s kind of like that- they see their part of the interaction with you as them selecting an option from a menu rather than requesting a task from a human?
posted by nouvelle-personne at 3:51 PM on January 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I haven’t run into this specific usage, but I’ve seen many senior colleagues use “we should” when they really meant “you need to.”

The “I’m going to” construction might make sense to me in the context of demonstrating a task, in training for instance, but I would find it as confusing as you do otherwise.

A lot of people in management overestimate their “downward” communication skills, and I think this is a symptom of that.
posted by armeowda at 3:54 PM on January 1, 2022 [12 favorites]

I get asked frequently by one person "could you help me to do X?" - which I always interpret as 'we will do X together in collaboration and this will help me'. When what this specific person means is "could you help me BY doing X FOR me?" But despite knowing this, my mind still initially interprets it as the former request. It annoys me, regardless.
posted by humuhumu at 4:16 PM on January 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

How weird! It reminds me of this old question. Maybe these two watch TV sports more than they interact with other people?
posted by fritley at 5:15 PM on January 1, 2022

Not exactly the same, but I used to work in a hospital that had a culture of people "requesting" you to do things by saying, "I need this, that, and blah blah blah" when they really should've said, "can you do this, that, and blah blah blah?" Or any number of nicer ways to interact with their fellow coworkers.
posted by carlypennylane at 6:02 PM on January 1, 2022

Best answer: My boss does this with “we” to the point that I have no fukkin clue who is doing what (him, me or us). Because it changes given the context and I’m just supposed to read his mind apparently. I feel your pain.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:13 PM on January 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have had almost literally the same experience as phunniemee (above). It is absolutely a thing that happens, and IME happens most with blindly privileged idiots (who have never had cause to think about how anything actually works).

At first I thought it was a British thing (I apologize for that), but then I realized it was an upper-class privilege thing independent of culture (I’ve encountered it in other cultures since then).

…I should in fairness say my response was to be an utter stickler about what was said (this in the era of electronic communications) because I am that much of an asshole and inappropriately privileged to the degree that I didn’t have to give a shit about what he thought because I could get another job the next week.

Like, say we’re having sandwiches. OK, data point, I will notify participants. No sandwiches arrive? Huh, well, fuck you J** M*****, you didn’t ask anyone to order sandwiches.
posted by aramaic at 10:21 PM on January 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

In many parts of the North in the UK you get a dialect feature where we/us is a polite form of I/me, as in “Pass us that glass over there, luv” or similar. I’ve never heard the opposite in a dialect where I means you or you all, but it’s very possible. Especially if there’s perhaps a culture of hierarchy, where the boss is the metonymic stand-in for the team or direct report.

It’s one of those situations where you might just silently notice that you have more context awareness than your boss and clarify things as needed to avoid mistakes. If they’re more growth mindset orientated, then they’ll eventually pick up on this and accommodate. If not, you’ll just have to be continually diligent so that things go smoothly.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:03 AM on January 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I have definitely run into the use of "we" to mean "you or mostly you", both with bosses & clients - mostly with people like small business owners, small church pastors, some creative/artistic kind of folks, people like that where there's a pretty deep personal connection to the job or project. So they can sort of default to saying "we" meaning "we as a company" or "we as a team" even though the actual specific tasks will be all/largely done by the person they're speaking to.

So this might be a sort of variation on that? Although not one I personally have encountered in the wild, so I'll add my vote to "this seems pretty weird."

(also, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an element of sexism here, where they're kind of mentally defaulting to "You (the woman) are merely acting as an extension of my (the man) intentions, so I don't need to bother to refer to you as an individual person.")
posted by soundguy99 at 7:00 AM on January 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

No, this is not a normal thing in any context I’ve ever heard of.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:08 AM on January 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never run into this! Very, very weird.

If a client said that to me, I’d likely respond with, “So it sounds like you’ll be taking care of most of the work - are there any tasks that you need my help with?”

I’m an accountant so I get hella literal with clients.
posted by dngrangl at 9:08 AM on January 2, 2022 [9 favorites]

I’ve only ever used/seen this used in teaching someone a process via demonstration, where I explain my thinking and actions out loud. “So when I log in, I see that my options drill down like so. I’m doing (foo) so I’m going to choose (thing)” and so on. I say what I am doing because the person I’m teaching might have any number of tasks, and part of what I want to teach is how to think through the task.

But in those cases it’s very clear that I am teaching the other person so that they can do it, so depending on how you’re hearing it the problem may be that the boss intended it for a teaching experience but failed to make that clear.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:08 AM on January 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

It's an interesting sign that the person speaking is conflating themself with you, and often a sign that their boundaries are poor.

The simplest thing to do is check every time. "Are you telling me that this is something I should do, or are you telling me about your own job?"

It may occur more often with people who have previously hung out with army officers, as they sometimes try to train them to take initiative by hinting that something needs to be done, and penalizing them for not picking up on it. There is an anecdote about a bunch of officers in training who were all sitting for some written test and the superior officer who was giving them the test said, "It's hot in here." As none of them picked up on the fact that he was hinting they should open a window he flunked the lot and they had to retest. The exam was for something technical, entirely unrelated to taking initiative and picking up on hints.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:53 AM on January 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Up until today I’ve never heard this before in my life, but my mom just did a version of this to me:

—

Me: Can I do anything to help with dinner?

Mom: Well, I’m going to chop up a few onions and add them to the curry.

Me: Okay…

Mom: So you can grab a cutting board.

—

I think it’s a way of being frustratingly indirect… it’s basically shorthand for I’m planning to do these things [so if you want to be helpful / a good employee, you should help me out by doing them for me].
posted by mekily at 6:19 PM on January 2, 2022 [7 favorites]