Communication Breakdown: 21 Signs and Still Lost

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this new podcast called We Should Probably Edit This.

But we won't. So in today's topic, this is going to be an interesting and funny one, which something occurred this weekend that led to us talking about this particular topic.

Okay, I know what you're gonna say now. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Okay, so we were getting ready to do a tag sale, and I have signs that I use when I do estate sales. So I said, we're going to repurpose that, but the difference is, is that we're going to cover those signs, and, and instead of it saying estate sales, we're going to put garage sale. We'll put the date and the time and that stuff. So I had put together— estate part only. Yeah, these— and so I had put together maybe about 9 signs. Okay, maybe less, I don't know.

Um, we had 12. We had 12.

And so he said, no, no, let me plot the surrounding area so that we know how many signs we need. I said, don't go crazy. Yeah, well, we don't need to go crazy. So next thing I know, he comes back. Now I had to print the, the, the, the parts that were going over the signage. I had to print them, and I used cardstock, which is a little heavier. It's not like thin paper, it's a little heavier. And he said to me, I need 21 signs. And I'm like, I need, I need—

no, I need 20.

I need 21 signs. That's what you said. No, no, no, no, no, wait, wait.

I need 21 more printouts. I need 21.

That's not what you said. I need 21 more signs. And I said to Matthew, more.

See, the thing about—

I need 21 signs.

I didn't say more.

You said 21 signs.

Yeah, I need 21.

So I'm thinking, 21, that's a lot of signs. What the hell are you doing? How far are you putting these signs out to direct traffic? But you know what, I don't— it's late in the day, it's Friday, we're getting ready to set it up for, for, uh, Saturday. And I said, okay. The problem is, is that when I printed them, part of it had to be cut off from the paper because it's too— was too big. So there I was cutting up all these things. I come downstairs with a stack. I said, okay, I printed out 21 of them. And he looked at me, he said, why'd you print so many?

No, after I got started, I got going. The pile wasn't getting smaller, so I said, I said, why is there so many?

And, and, and you said you wanted 21 signs.

Well, you already had 12. I only need 9 more.

That's not what you said though.

Okay, that's what— that's how you heard it.

That's not—

I know, I need 21 altogether. I didn't say, I didn't say 21 more.

He said 21. Okay, signs. 21 signs.

No, I need it. We didn't have— oh my God, we didn't have 21 signs.

I didn't know that. For all I knew, they were in, in the—

because double-sided, so it doesn't matter anyways.

So that began the, the torturous part of reflecting on moments in our past where somebody said something Not very clear and precise.

No, it was very clear in my mind. Where are we going to meet? Let's look at— let's talk about Rockefeller Center.

All right, when we lived in Manhattan, his parents came up to visit and he said—

was it with my parents?

It was your parents. I was with your mom, you were with your dad. Your mom and I did, uh, uh, we went to an event together and And we were in the city— well, we lived in the city— and we said, okay, when the event's finished, I'll meet you. I'll meet you by—

in front of the big guy at Rockefeller Center.

Okay, well, so my mind— let's, let's get— I wanna— I want people to respond to this. When you hear the big guy at Rockefeller Center, what's the first thing you think of? What's the, what's the one iconic image you get in your mind? Now, I've lived in New York a long, long time. We both lived in the city together for quite some time. So what do you think when someone says meet me by the big guy at Rockefeller Center? I'm gonna give you a moment to figure it out.

Try to remember where you said it was. I remember where, where we messed up, but go ahead. What, what's the big guy to you?

So Rockefeller Center, big guy is the ice skating rink, and at the ice skating rink you have the, the large golden guy, um, at Rockefeller Center. That's Rockefeller Center, by the way. That's one of the iconic areas of Rockefeller Center. What did you think it Are you sure that you weren't—

you— I was at that spot.

I thought you were at that spot.

No. Yeah, you were at the— you were at the other one on the side of— on the side of the street.

There was— there's another guy.

Yeah, who's just as big. So you're waiting in one spot and I'm waiting in another.

Now this is before cell phones, so there's no way you could call the guy and say, where are you? Right, right. I don't even know how we ended up finding each other. Maybe we just started wandering.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I know that, um, but I know that that's— that was one of those moments.

I was at one big guy, you were at the other big guy, and we just stood there waiting. Yeah.

Why weren't the other guy coming? What's the story? How many other big guys can there be in Rockefeller Center?

I think that my favorite one was Again, you didn't have cell phones, so you had to like pre-arrange meeting locations if you were going to meet up somewhere.

Correct.

So the other one was the, was the subway platform.

Yes.

Yeah, so we said we'd meet at the subway platform. So again, you know, there are multiple layers in the subways. And I don't know why you want to point at me because it's always you who makes the decision on where we're meeting.

I don't say where we're meeting, right? You will say, but in my mind I know exactly where I'm going to meet you, and I want you to go to the front of the train.

The front. This has nothing to do with the platform issue. Well, no, the platform issue was, is that you were You were on the upper— you were like by the part where you come in at the, at the turn, turnstiles, and I was on the platform itself where the train was. We were on different levels. See, now we're having a hard time. We're just remembering what—

I remember that. I remember when we were taking a train and you said get off towards the front, or get on the front. There must have been. And, and I'm thinking, okay, I got to go to the front of the train when the actuality was it was the back of the train because it was wherever that, that entrance was. And so that's where the stairs were to get out, and that's where we, that's where we were supposed to have met. So we were literally on opposite ends.

The other one was that we were on different levels.

Yeah, only because— explain that to people, because in trains in the city, it's subway, it's underground.

Right.

So you can have multiple— well, not usually multiple, no more than 2. I don't think there's more than 2.

It depends how many trains are coming through or what the station's set up as. But, but you usually have to— you go through the turnstile and then you have to go down to get onto the train.

Correct.

With it. So correct, one of us was sitting up on by where the turnstile is when you first come out of the turnstile, and the other was on the platform itself.

Because once again, we weren't clear.

Yeah.

So I'm sure everybody has experienced that type of communication problem, communication problems. It's— and, and at the moment in time, you could be really, really mad because the— where was the other guy? And you don't know where the other person is, right? And back then, like I said, there were no cell phones, so it's not like you can call and say, where are you? Um, so you can get really upset. Um, ultimately we always end up finding each other. I don't know how that works out, but we always end up finding each other.

Might be several minutes later, or maybe an hour.

No, I don't think we ever an hour later. I think it might have been—

I think that— I think two of those events, I think the Rockefeller one, it was— it took us a while. It took us a while.

Well, there's also a lot of people in the city, so it's sometimes hard to find an individual And I'm— I am the type of person, when we lived in the city, the greatest analogy I could give you of the type of personality that I am compared to my husband: if we're in a crowded scenario and there's a lot of people, I can find openings in that crowd and move quickly.

But they're— but wait, they're openings for one person, and I quickly close You know, if you, if you have any sense of being polite or letting that other person go, it doesn't work. It just—

that doesn't say I'm not polite. I, if I have my kids with me, I tell them, don't let go, you hold on, and I'm going to clear the path. And when my, when my boys were playing football, I would say to them, you know how the coach will always say to you, find the opening, find the hole, and that's how you get through? That's how you get through. And none to be rude.

No, but I'm not rude.

I'm not bulldozing my way through the crowd. I'm maneuvering through the crowd. I'm going through.

See, then I, then I let someone else cut me and get in front of me, and then that's it. Then before you know it, I'm 10 people behind. Yes, behind her.

And I'm looking back and I'm saying, oh my God, we even say—

we even That's still this, that's still even at church the other day coming out. But again, you found the hole, and then I'm letting the other people out of the aisle in front of me, and then—

but I wait, I, I wait for you to, to catch up, um, and then look at you, and, and by this point I'm realizing—

well, whenever we're in an, at an Ultra event, um, you're the one that's going to go get the seats. Oh, where I am, right?

In that particular case, I'm handy. In that particular case, it's okay if I'm dodging, uh, people, right? In that particular case, because the hard part is when you say, I need— we need to get 12 seats, and I'm like, oh my God, I gotta get 12 seats.

So then I'm going in, saving seats for other people.

That's hard.

That's—

you could save a seat. Yeah, but you can't really save a lot of seats. But you do try. I mean, I, I've done that even not an ultra, like a kids event or something like that, and I needed a row. I would take the row. I would figure out how to get there early enough to make sure that I had— I had the seats that we wanted for the event. But those are the kind of things— it's always about communication. It's always about figuring out what the other guy is doing.

And when, and when you do communicate and you do say, I'm going to meet you here or there. I mean, today it, it's, it's not quite as critical because most of us are carrying those devices and you could text. Yeah, you can say, I'm here, where are you? Yeah, I'm on my way. Or if you're sharing location, you can see, you can see where they're at. Right, right. But back then it, you had to really, really be specific and then you had to actually reiterate, have the other person reiterate, "Where'd you say we're gonna meet?" Yeah, repeat.

Now, do we now know where one of our children gets that "I have to repeat the scenario" from?

What? Yeah, I have to, I want to reconfirm that you understand what I'm talking about.

Right, we have to.

And that I understand that You understood how I explained it is a little bit better.

Maybe that was it. You have to— sometimes you have to be explaining what exactly—

to make sure that I didn't get lost in translation. Yes, because you didn't get lost in my translation.

Yeah, that's usually the way it is. I'll get lost in your translation type of deal.

And it's funny how we think, but it's perfectly clear to me It's always perfectly clear to the other guy.

The other person feels like they knew.

Well, that's like, that's like sending text messages, you know. It's, you know, in your head what you're saying, but they're reading it completely different than how you said it. And, and if you get something just off, or you didn't use the right word, or you, you put that period in or that comma in, it just comes across to them completely different than how you intended. So I think a lot of times I really don't like, you know, written communication, especially when it comes to texting, when you're trying to explain something and that you need to get that feedback from—

well, the rule of it all is, is if you've got to say something and it requires you to write a paragraph which requires someone to scroll up and down to read it Then talking about me again, that's why you need to pick up the phone and call. Texting is good for simple pops. Where are you? What's your ETA? Which is funny because I gave that once to my daughter-in-law. I said to her, what's your ETA? And she says, who's Etta? And you had— but, and truth be told, they have done some abbreviations which I've turned around to you and said, what does that mean?

What?

Yeah, well, some of those, some of those, um, BRB took me a while to figure out what that meant. I was like, what? What is BRB?

Be right back.

Yeah. So sometimes the abbreviations in a text can be too abbreviated.

Well, for people our age Yeah, you could, like, yeah, or you have to Google it first. What is it? Before you respond, what, what are the— what is this? What could those initials be?

Yeah, what can that, what can that mean? But communication in all, in all forms, whether you're texting or you're, you know, I think even when you're talking to each other, there's always some things that need to be clarified, um, things that you need to make sure the other guy understands. So you have to take some extra time out to figure it out. And I say read the room or understand the circumstances that you're in, because if you're stressed or you're trying to do something and somebody says something to you, you may not completely understand what exactly they're asking you, and that could lead you to get angry. You know, that could—

my best advice with that is try to put yourself in in the other person's shoes. You know, when you're explaining or talking to them or asking them a question, you know, imagine how they may feel or how they would respond. Are you tired?

I am. It was, it was a big day today.

We did, we did a weekend of, of a tag sale, of garage selling, tag selling.

Yeah, I don't know. However, I never understood. I'm gonna have to look that up. Why is it called a tag sale or garage sale?

Well, I mean, the tag sale is because you put a tag on it for how much it is.

And a garage sale is what you physically are—

you're selling stuff out of the garage. And then there's a yard sale too. They're all— it all means the same thing. But somebody else said the yard sale, somebody said garage sale, somebody said tag sale.

So maybe it's how you were raised, raised, or what.

I know, I know in California I pretty much remember them being called garage sales.

I don't remember I see. In New York, when I was raised, you didn't do any of the three. There was no tags.

You threw it out on the curb.

Yeah, you did. You just threw it out and the garbage man would come and take it.

Yeah, those are some of the best times for us. I'd go, I'd go around the city during garbage day and find stuff. There were several pieces of furniture that we got.

It made it very difficult for you to have that type of environment because you won't want to bring strangers inside your home. And you didn't have an outdoor setting. You didn't have an outdoor setting.

Uber Eats. And they—

no, but no one's coming inside your house. They may bring food to you, but they're not physically coming in.

Delivered stuff in the city no matter what, the way before Uber Eats or any of those places.

But still, it wasn't— it does— it's just not conducive to that type of deal. I, I— even doing an estate sale in the city is very, very complicated. Because you, you're gonna be bringing in people into a building. So you find that it's not as—

do you think you could do an estate sale in a doorman building?

Mm, you could if you got permission from the association to do it. You could.

Anyways, we're not there, so we don't live in the city anymore.

We don't have those particular problems. But I will say that doing the tag sale, garage sale, yard sale, however sale you want to—

get rid of your crap sale.

Get rid of your, your, uh, trash. Because what was this?

It was—

no, it's one man's, uh, junk is another man's treasure, right?

But I wouldn't say that we had trash. We weren't getting rid of it. We were just getting rid of stuff we haven't used in a long time.

Yeah.

Some stuff I would consider would be junk, you know, junk to the fact that what am I gonna do with this anymore?

Yeah, why do you have it?

Right.

So it was kind of like, get rid of it, because if, if you haven't used something in over a year, it's safe to say that— no, I'd give it 2 or 3 years before I'd say that's how we end up with having to do one every 2 to 3 years. In order to clear out stuff, uh, only so that we can make room for other things.

Some stuff we collected along the way from others.

We did. We— you call— or you just collect things in general. Like when your children say, hey, can I leave this in your house? And that's where it stays for the next 5 years.

And they outgrow it or don't want it anymore.

They don't want it. And so they're kind of like, well, what do we want to do with it? I'm like, um Either you can come get it or I'm going to get rid of it. Okay, well then you can get rid of it. And I'm like, could have done that a long time ago, but instead it's sitting there waiting for you to kind of figure out what you want to do with it.

Well, it feels good now that I can move around the basement.

Well, the goal for the basement was something else.

What?

I want the sauna.

Oh, okay, so you can sweat.

Yes, I can sweat inside my house. Which is supposed to be good for you.

You can do that in the bedroom.

No, not the same thing.

No, I don't mean that. I mean, because if I— until I put the air conditioning in, it feels like a sauna up there.

Well, because it's a cape, so you're sleeping in the attic.

Yeah, so why do we need a sauna? Just go upstairs.

Yeah, no.

Okay, that's not how this works. I know, I know.

Don't try to be funny.

Hahaha.

So, what else do you want to talk about? Is there anything else?

Well, I mean, just back to communication, you know, with that. It's just being clear about different things, you know, making sure that— I think the best thing to do is ask somebody to repeat it if you're not clear. And what it is, just to make sure that they repeat it so you understand.

Or sometimes you just have to enunciate.

Well, that's a different problem, isn't it?

No, that's still part of communication.

Right, but, but I don't always enunciate.

No, sometimes we talk like a ventriloquist where the lips Like what, like this?

Kind of like this? And then I don't say enough and you don't—

it, it's hard for you.

It doesn't come across the right way.

It doesn't come out. And so you're like, what?

What?

Open.

I know I need to be more clear a lot of times and then add the volume too. So when I do say something, it's not number one, you can hear me. Number two, you can understand what I'm saying.

It's clear.

Although I think you understand what you say because you'll mumble something back to me and I'll think, oh, she understood what I'm saying.

If I'm mumbling, that means that it's something that I'm saying to myself. It has nothing to do with you. Mumbles just means it's only meant for you. It's like your own listening to your own whispers.

There was something— yes, something yesterday that happened.

I don't remember.

I asked you for something and And you never heard me. That's okay. Stop trying to use that, that brain.

It's late in the day, and like I said, we're doing this too late. We did, we did 2 days of a tag sale.

2 days and 3 weekends. One, one, the first weekend was to go through the basement and put everything in the garage, right? The second weekend was to clean everything, price everything, get it set up and ready. And then the third weekend was to actually do the sale, right?

So it takes, it takes a lot. Yeah, it does. But we were successful. We were able to accomplish what we needed to accomplish. We weren't 100%, we didn't get rid of everything. However, We did make a really good dent. We made some extra little cash, and then the rest that's left over, you know, is not coming back inside. So no, it's going to be—

we kept a couple of things, couple very few that we thought we could keep, but everything else— I think the biggest, biggest lesson that we learned is don't do a sale on a Sunday.

Yeah, does not turn out.

Even with the rain yesterday that we had We still had a better turnout yesterday on Saturday than we did today.

We did, we did. People still— people still showed up. Yeah, and even at one point it was coming down really hard, and I was surprised that there were still people walking down with their umbrellas. But it was good, it was good. I'm glad we were able to do it, and it's done. We're good for 3 more years.

I could do 5 or 10 if you ask me.

It all depends.

It's not something, not something that I really could say that you're right. He definitely— no, no, I definitely don't.

And he does not like it at all. No, I don't think we even like going. We used to go to them.

I like going to them, you know, when we did, when we did estate sales, I liked Well, we were held captive in somebody's house when we were doing an estate sale. No, but I mean preparing them. I like going through the stuff and finding what we could find.

Sometimes you found some really great—

and then the challenge was determining how to price it.

But we always managed. It's not a challenge, it's research.

I mean, the challenge is finding that thing. Yeah, that's usually the bigger— and then finding what— what has somebody sold it for.

That's the more important aspect to it all. Yeah, that was the most important thing. But we did good, and I'm glad we got rid of it. And we only had a couple little minor glitches of communication issues, but otherwise we did, we did well.

No, we didn't have too many miscommunications. No, for this event, 21 signs, that's all we had. Okay, all right, take it back to the signage.

Because it was a pain to make all those posters.

But all right, well, we should probably edit this, but we won't.

Until next time, I'm Matthew, and I'm Nancy.

See ya, bye!