A direct appoach or sugar coated subtley?

[Lunasa]

I'm not sure whether this belong in the Intellectual Discussion forum or not, but feel free to move it if it's deemed necessary.

Basically, when someone breaks something major to you, how do you prefer it be said? Would you rather a direct approach where everything is laid out clearly and concisely, and at times, a little(or a lot) offensive, but completely truthful or would you rather have it be sugar coated and verbose, and confusing, but it sounds nicer and is more or less likely to hurt your feelings, but leaves you with slight misunderstanding?

I know it's a bit of a confusing concept, but I'm trying to see a consensus.

[foster kid]

well it really depends on what it is....... but i would rather be told directly... ya know like " hey dude i just broke your cd player (or what ever it may be) i am so sorry man i really am i didn't mean for it to happen." if they tell me what really happened and i can tell they are really sorry then i would be more likely to forgive them. sure i gonna be mad but it would be easier to get over if i was told the truth and knew what had happened.

[Pete]

I'm a big fan of being direct. Depending on the news, I might tell someone to sit down, or I'll take a few steps back myself. Thankfully, I don't have to drop bombs on people too often, but it sucks... unless, of course, it's good news.

As for being told, I also like directness. Don't sugar coat crap for me, I'll handle whatever it is, cause if you think about it, the news is gonna be what it is. Taking a longer amount of time to tell me isn't going to help when it can be said in a few words.

[Maridia]

Straight forward, don't bullshit me. For years I always thought being nice about stuff works best. The more I've dealt with people and stuff the more you just lay it out and are to the point the more people have respect for you. Since they know you're not dancing around words like so many do. It's not always the easiest but it comes back to bite you in the ass the least.

[Furore]

I tend to prefer the 'Alright, I ****ed you in this way and this is how I can repay you' approach. Direct and offering a solution to keep all parties happy. If someone breaks something of mine and doesn't feel the need to make it up to me, that's what would piss me off.

Sugar coating's just a waste of time.

[LocoColt04]

My post included, the vote is 4-0 in favor of no-bullshitting.

Being direct doesn't necessarily mean being concise. If someone has something major to tell me, I want the news without all of the fluff. Tell me what the hell happened, and then provide some detail. Don't go on about that time that you did me a favor and I owe you one; don't go on about how nice it would be if blah blah blah could happen; don't go on about how I must have felt the last time such and such happened.

Don't relate the news to something else unless it has relevance. Tell me the news, good or bad, and then wrap it up. Allow me to make a proper metaphor.

Large news is like the main course of a seven-course meal. The idea of the large meal is to give you a lot of little things to fill up on. You pick and tear at the plates as they pass by, but by the time the main course appears, you find yourself less hungry than you were before. You aren't able to consume the entire meal; thus, when forced to finish, you find yourself unable to fully digest. Food gets backed up in your digestive tract, waiting for its turn in line. Indigestion creates discomfort. Discomfort creates pain. And I should probably watch less House.

Bottom line: Don't fluff the news. It may be rougher up front, but it's easier in the end.



Tee-hee, my "bottom line" is a poop metaphor.
This is directly relevant to my earlier digestive tract statements.

/grin

[little.miss.VIOLENT]

Yeah, I definitely prefer the no-bullshit approach. Just, like, last week I found out that my bff had been lying to me about something major. When I found out, I totally blew a gasket. When I asked him about it, he said he didn't tell me coz he was scared I was gonna react..... Well, the way I did. If he hadn't been bullshitting me, I probably would've had the same reaction I usually do - slap him, walk away, and forget about 20mins later. I HATE when people bullshit me. Honesty is the best policy.

[Clint]

I honestly prefer neither approach. Even if somebody breaks something of mine and doesn't tell me, I'm not going to get mad. Whatever he or she broke is just a material item. It's sold in stores everywhere. I can always just go out and buy another one. People who freak out about material items need to get their priorities straight. And if somebody is feeding me a sugar coated lie, then who cares? If they feel that they need to lie, then it's probably in their best interest to not tell anybody. However, if somebody is telling me the truth (and by truth, I mean saying whatever they are thinking at the time), and something he or she says just so happens to be offensive, that's going to piss me off quite a bit. I'd rather hear a lie then know the "truth," because it's not healthy to know everything that's going on in a person's mind. Thoughts are crazy enough as it is. If somebody starts sharing thoughts (what's classified as one's "truth,) he or she is going to go down in my book as clinically insane.

It doesn't really matter if somebody is telling the truth or not, because truth doesn't really exist. Take a schizophrenic, for example. He sees a green alien over in the corner that people without schizophrenia don't see. That green alien is true to him, but not to anybody else. Hitler's truth was that he was doing the world a favor. Most other people in the world disagreed with him. If it's the truth, how could it have been disagreed with. People worry too much about truth and lie, whereas, in reality, only one of them even exists, and any time anybody says something, it's a lie, because there will always be people out there who will see something else, possibly something that we see as a lie, as their truth.

So I don't worry about if somebody is sugar coating something or not, because either way, it's just bullshit.

[Unknown Entity]

I like to be told the truth, no matter how much it is going to hurt me. Taking a long approach to ease the infomation on me each step at a time just angers me, and 9/10 times, I'd have guessed something was wrong. I have the gift of telling when people are lying to me. ^^;;

If I break something that belongs to someone else (which is very rare that I do), then I would say: "Look, I'm really sorry but I broke... blahblahblah," and if needed a: "I'll replace it, I swear!"

Best thing about it is, is that if anything of mine breaks, it would have to have been broken in my room - I don't leave my stuff all around the place. So then I'd know who has been in my room.