When I first read the requirements for this week, a story automatically popped into my head which would fit the criteria perfectly. In the Wood and Smith, I read that people in certain places don’t even have telephones or reliable telephones let alone Internet access so it made me wonder, what would’ve happend had the situation which I’m about to share happen face-to-face and not through Internet communication? Well anyways this is a very interesting story because there are two sides of the story and I will tell both to the best of my abilities so that both parties are well represented.
So last year I dated this girl, who for the sake of her privacy I will call Sally Jo. Me and Sally Jo had been dating for about three months and things were going very nice. One Sunday, I had just got back to Corvallis off of a basketball road trip. I hopped on to my computer to check my facebook page and I noticed I had a message. Of course it was from Sally Jo which obviously made me happy but she wrote me to inform me that she had broken her phone and the store was closed until Monday so we would have to communicate online for that day. I was cool with the idea so we talked and checked our pages for most of the day to see when the other one would reply to a message. That night I asked Sally Jo if she wanted to come out with me in a message on Facebook before I went to sleep and of course she said yes, but I didn’t specify what we were doing(big mistake) and I told her we would need to meet up at my house around seven o’clock the next day.
Turns out when I told Sally Jo that we were going out, she assumed that I meant a date with just me and her so that next day, she spent her time picking out a nice dress and she went to get a manicure and she got her hair done at the salon, the works! I was thinking we would just go hang out with a couple of my friends and go to hang out at the baror something and have a pretty decent night, but nothing too special because I was tired from the road trip. Well Monday night rolls around and of course Seven o’clock comes up and My door bell rings. To my surprise I open the door and Sally Jo has on a nice, sexy tight fit dress and some pumps to match. I have on a white t-shirt with an Oregon State hoody on and some jeans and shoes. By the look on her face and the whiff of how good she had smelled I could tell there was a big misunderstanding as to what we both thought I meant when I said we can go out.
Had we been able to talk on the phone or face-to-face, my invitation to go out on Monday wouldn’t have been open for interpretation Sally Jo would’ve known what I meant when I said we can go out on Facebook the night before. The situation was definitely stressful but was eased once we talked and understood where both parties were coming from and plus Sally Jo just happend to have some other clothes in her car that she can change into. This situation was big learning experience which let me know to be as clear as possible when communicating with someone who cannot hear my voice or see me physically.
March 4, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Ricky,
That is a very funny story that I’m sure if you were to have used the phone or face to face communication the whole situation could have been cleared up. On the positive side though this girl must have really liked you to have gone all out for a single date! I was very impressed!
March 5, 2009 at 1:18 am
Oh man. I have had similar misinterpretations through the internet. Online communication is nice because we can plan out what we are going to say. Editing and refining our words is great. On the other hand, so much of communication is done through body language and tone. Online classes must be full of subtle errors in communication!
Well it sounds like things may have worked out for you and your “date” in the end. Facebook certainly has been responsible for more than a handful of communication mix-ups.
March 6, 2009 at 3:32 am
I know what you mean how something written with one thing in mind can be misinterpreted to something completely unintentional. When I sent out emails to all my family and friends to let them know that I had a temporary yahoo email account while I transitioned to a new ISP, I wrote “I will let you know what my new home address is as soon as the dust settles.” Which, in my mind meant, home EMAIL address. My cousin in Canada called in a panic thinking I lost the family home and was looking for a new house. “Did you pick up and move?” was her panicked reply. Ooops.
Good post – and I’m glad it worked out in the end. Sally Jo seemed very understanding.
March 6, 2009 at 4:55 am
Just checking.
March 6, 2009 at 5:54 am
I enjoyed reading this blog entry. The whole time I was anticipating what you were going to say about how the interaction would go when she and you finally met face-to-face. I can completely relate to how you and Sally Jo felt. In my assignment I wrote of how when I was working in a group for a Comm assignment I was forced to use email to communicate with group members because we had completely different schedules. For my situation the internet served as a way out for two of my group members as they flat out did not utilize the internet as a communication resource; which ultimately caused problems within the group.
I agree that if you and Sally Jo were able to meet in person or at least hear each others voices when communicating the two of you more than likely would not have had such a mix up. She would have been able to tell by the tone of your voice that you were tired from the trip and you would have noticed she was maybe too excited about the meeting. Then, you could have explained how it was going to be nothing fancy and she probably would have shown up in a cute sweatshirt and jeans. I feel the same goes for my group project. We would have been able to communicate and help each other on our sections of the assignment and would not have had to turn the assignment in late and have the entire group arguing before the project was finished. In the Postman reading I enjoyed the section discussing Milgram’s study of how people do as they are told. I feel this section relates to both of our stories. Milgram claims, “The social context in which people find themselves will be a controlling factor in how they behave” (151). This finding is true as both Sally Jo and my group members were waiting on us (you and me) to tell them what they were supposed to wear/do for our next meeting. If we were able to have communicated face-to-face I believe our encounters would have been much smoother and our other parties would have been prepared for what we had planned.