A reader writes:
Lately I’ve been subject to a technique by coworkers that I call “death by a thousand questions.” It goes something like this:
Q: Hey, are we getting in the combination llama/alpaca wool?
A: I don’t have a date yet, I’m hoping for the 20th.
Q: So the 20th.
A: It’s not confirmed. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.
Q: Who needs to confirm it?
A: The freight forwarder.
Q: Well, haven’t they confirmed it before?
A: Yes, and when they confirm it they will let me know.
Q: Why can’t they confirm it now?
A: I’m not sure, but they are a reliable company.
Q: Is it their provider?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Is it their supplier?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Is the problem the llama wool or the alpaca wool?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Shouldn’t you know?
A: There’s no problem that I am aware of. The company is not late. They said on or about the 20th. If it turns out it’s late, they’ll tell me then what the issue is.
Q: So is the 21st considered late?
A: What?
Q: You said on or about the 20th. When do you get late? When do you start asking questions?
A: I don’t know. We’ve never had issues with this company.
Q: We need to get the date confirmed.
A: I agree. It should happen this week.
Q: When this week?
A: Sometime this week? Is there an issue I need to know about? On or about the 20th is typical delivery time. Is there an emergency?
Q: Don’t you think every delivery is important? I think the people relying on that wool think it’s important.
A: I know it matters to people. As soon as I have confirmation, I’ll send it out.
Q: You know the answer. You just don’t want to share it.I’ve also had email rounds like this. How do I shut this down without killing someone?
What on earth is going on in your office that this is happening with multiple people?
If it were a single person, I’d think it was just something about them — anxiety interfering with their work, maybe, or an excessive degree of rigidity/inability to deal with any ambiguity, or … well, I don’t know what. But something about them.
But multiple people?
And with that accusatory twist at the end (“you just don’t want to share it”)?
That makes me very curious about the context this is happening in! For example, have there been ongoing issues with late deliveries or other problems, and has no one informed the people affected in a timely way or acted with enough urgency to resolve them? Have there been issues with you or your team hoarding info and not sharing it with people who would benefit from knowing it? Are there other trust issues in play — either trust in people’s competence or trust that everyone is working toward the same goal?
If those issues aren’t in play on your team, are there other teams in the company where those have been issues, and so now the people you’re dealing with approach everything through that lens?
Or, are they mirroring to you what they get from their own manager? Sometimes when someone works for a manager who micromanages the crap out of their work, they start passing that down the chain; they know their manager will be asking them these questions (“so the 20th? well, who needs to confirm it? well, when will that happen?”) so they try to get out ahead of it by asking you all that up-front. (Sometimes people realize this is dysfunctional but it’s the best way to survive with their boss, and other times they absorb that way of operating as the norm and don’t even realize it’s dysfunctional. Even more fun, sometimes those people then carry that habit with them to other jobs where it’s completely out of left field.)
As for how to shut it down, a few options:
1. When you know you’re dealing with someone like this, try to give as much of the info as you can up-front. It’ll take more time initially but it’ll save you time in the long run by cutting out a lot of the back and forth. So for example:
Q: Hey, are we getting in the combination llama/alpaca wool?
A: I don’t have a firm date yet. I’m hoping for the 20th, but once it’s confirmed they’ll let me know. If it’s not the 20th, I expect it will be within a few days of that. This company is very reliable, but if there’s context on your end that I should be aware of, please let me know!
2. If you find yourself in the middle of one of these long back-and-forths, pause and say, “From your questions, it sounds like there might be special context around this delivery? What’s going on with this one — anything unusual I should factor in?”
3. If it happens repeatedly from the same person or the same team, address the pattern: “You have seemed very concerned about our deliveries lately, so I wanted to give you some big-picture info about how they work. We generally know the rough timeframe something is expected to arrive in, but the exact date isn’t confirmed until the week before. The companies we work with are very reliable, and their estimated dates are usually correct. Is anything going on on your end that’s causing worry about them?” (And if the problem is with multiple people on a team, you might have this conversation with their manager.)