Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

The Interrupter

During a conversation with C in a hallway after lunch, he yelled at me, "Stop interrupting me! You're always interrupting!" 

I didn't think I had interrupted him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I shut up and he continued speaking .... 

... and he kept on talking. His monologue was mostly one long sentence. 

Was I "always interrupting"? Or had he merely thrown a tantrum to get his way, so he could talk and not have to listen to me? I decided to treat it as a scientific experiment, and glanced at my watch to check the time.

When he finally finished his long sentence, which went on for more than 20 minutes, I tried to rejoin the "conversation". He immediately interrupted me, so I shut up again and waited.
C wasn't a close colleague. He worked at the IBM lab where I had a "postdoctoral and junior faculty" fellowship in 1988-89, and we occasionally sat at the same lunch table. I no longer remember what topic he was expounding on, but I remember that it wasn't something about which he knew more than I did.

At an infinitesimal lull, I spoke up to calmly say, "I'm very sorry to interrupt, but I've been politely listening to you for the past half hour. Whenever I think you're done and I try to say something, you start talking again, so I stop. When do I get to speak?"

He berated me angrily for having timed his monologue, before I politely excused myself and walked away.

I mentioned our interaction to a colleague, who reassured me that it was him and not me. He was known for being hard to get along with.

From similar experiments, I've observed that the people who angrily tell me that I'm monopolizing the conversation usually speak for more time than I do.

Alice in Wonderland spent much of her adventures trying to deal calmly and rationally with angry, irrational, unreasonable creatures, mostly older men. Sometimes I feel as if that accurately describes my career.

When I'm tempted to react in anger (in my personal life or at work), I try to remember to take some deep breaths, channel Alice in Wonderland, and say to myself:
"First, self-confidence; then kindness." 
When I succeed, it's the self-confidence that enables me to be kind.

And if I do take the floor for too long, I hope that you'll let me know kindly rather than angrily.