never forget the universal rule of the order of things: People Will Not Read It
signs at stores? émail? menu ?? instruction ? post online ? caption with andswer to question ? group hand outs ??? street sign ??? no. The Written Word Is The Enemy
#The number of compliments i have gotten for reading a thing
The ability to occasionally Read A Thing will make you a hero in your workplace, especially if it is for example an error message that tells you what you need to do differently, or instructions on unjamming a printer.
how dare you say we put jam in the printer
Sadly very true
And to make things worse, the spoken word is also usually tuned out, unless it’s in very very small soundbites
Especially in work settings where someone is trying to explain a work thing to someone else
Often the only way to get any significant amount of information to a coworker or boss is to begin talking about the issue, and leave time after every sentence for questions you can answer, and mostly just let the conversation be built from those questions
because some people will genuinely not listen to anything that is not a direct answer to a question they personally asked
(and some will force you to do that whether you want it or not, by just interrupting any long explanation with constant questions until they’ve been fed all the data they think they need to know)
in any case, this will not get ALL your info across. It can only transmit the info you can express as answers to questions in the order the person felt like asking them.
but there is no way to get ALL the info across, because people won’t listen unless their brains are ready for it.
Some info you have to wait until your coworker’s refusal to know it actually causes a problem they care about.