About an hour into the meeting, the former CTO and one of the sales engineers from the company courting us to become a partner got into what I would call, "dick waving." Nothing was really being said, neither party was listening to the other, and it quickly devolved into simple case of, "I think know more than you do, and I'm going to make all these people believe my side of the story."
This went on for about 15 minutes.
It was quite the volley, and I think we all enjoyed watching the verbal masturbation -- who doesn't? At the end of this, the SE from this company latched on to one of the former CTO's comments. It was then, that I heard the greatest statement ever:
I know you think you understand what you believe I said, but what you heard is not what I meant.Realizing that this could be the greatest thing ever, I wrote it down verbatim, right then. What's odd is, if you plug that statement into your favorite search engine, there are numerous iterations of it.
What kind of person would lift that kind of drivel from someone else, and be proud to repeat it in a high-level, multi-million dollar meeting?
2 comments:
That is fantastic. It's critical on so many levels - you don't understand, you didn't hear correctly and what you think I heard isn't what I meant.
I've been tempted to say things to that effect. Typically, they would be career-limiting and I've resisted.
It is quite frustrating to make a statement or ask a question, and then listen to a diatribe that doesn't address what you said in any way. It takes a lot of patience to let them finish and then calmly reiterate your question... for them to again misunderstand. When a correct answer is mission critical, it's difficult to just let it go, especially when the ignorant responses are incorrect AND condescending.
Saying something that on the surface sounds polite, but actually has SO many layers of criticality as Kristin noted, would be very satisfying. At least for a moment.
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