Just when is misunderstanding instructions not listening?

Post Reply New Topic

Today in class, we were working on cleaning the restrooms for training and I remembered the teacher saying yesterday we will be doing steps 1 thru 9 and then the next day we do the rest. But today I find out we were still doing steps one thru nine, not taking off where we left off and she accused me of not listening to her. I found that insulting. So later on, another person comes by asking her how two men in his group are not listening to him and they are not doing steps 1 thru 9 and they think they have to start at ten. She told him they do have to start at 1 thru 9 and I said "I am not the only one who misunderstood." The teacher opened her mouth and told me I needed to be quiet and I say too much.
I had no idea what her problem was.

it's simple. Teachers are idiots and don't comprehend their own instructions, or say them wrong.

what kind of class is this?

if someone said today we're doing steps 1-9 and tomorrow we'll do the rest, I'd assume we'd be starting with step 10 unless you can't get to 10 without doing 1-9. if they said tomorrow we'll be doing all the steps, I'd understand we're starting at step 1.

I think the teachers problem is that she is human and is dealing with human students. There was a misunderstanding. She was probably out of line when she said that you weren't listening. I much prefer the phrase, "there has been a miscommunication" as this wording does not lay blame with either the sender or the receiver of the miscommunication.

For future classes, clarify with your teacher. Use neutral language. Say something like, "I want to make sure that I have the instructions clear so that my groups work goes smoothly, do you mean (insert question)?" If she responds with a rude comment, then you can say, "I need somewhat more clarity than the average person when following verbal and written instructions. I also need respectful communication with my instructors. I'll ask again, do you mean (insert question here). This should about do it.

This is for custodian training and when we get done with our classes, then we go in for training and when we are done with that, then we are given permanent jobs. I may have taken it literal because two other men did also and one of them is also autistic. If two other women misunderstood them also, then it was the teacher, not me but my partner knew what she meant so did the guy.




I would have preferred that too but because she insulted me, it made it harder for me to listen because of my obsessive thinking about what happened and the fact she accused me of not listening. She made me feel bad. Then I felt better when I head two others had also misunderstood so it was like revenge when I said I wasn't the only one. She needed to hear that so she would know I was not the only one and I had misunderstood. I guess she didn't like the fact that she wasn't clear in her instructions so she couldn't even say "I guess it was my fault, I should have been more clear." I don't think she knew from the start it was a misunderstanding until one man told her how two other men were not doing steps 1 thru 9 and I called her out on her mistake.

Could be that she’s a jerk.
Could be that she is unethical.
Could be a memory thing on her part.
Could that she was being self-centered.
Could be the fact that she was embarrassed.
Could be that she lost her notes on step 10 < ?
Could be that she wish’s to prolong the course time.
Could be that she had ulterior motives that particular day.
Could be that she was surprised by people actually listening.
Could be some new students and she did not want them to miss out.
Could be that she was thinking about something other than the course.
Could be that she is considering another course more in dept of curriculum.
And of course it could be the fact that she was being self-centered and she forgot about the rest of the people in the class on that particular day because she had ulterior motives as a result of her unethical thoughts with some new student with whom she wish’s to prolong their stay and as a result of you listening, you reminded her that she was thinking about something other than the course and that embarrassed her so she acted like a jerk as a result.

A lot of people say this when they are getting frustrated in general.

I know I have done it when trying to explain things, or when I say something EXACTLY how I mean it and it is misinterpreted or read too far into.

People say this a lot to me when the opposite happens-when they say something meant to be implied and I take it word for word.

I just want to say that I think it's really visually fascinating and poetic how you made each sentence slightly longer than the one before it so it forms a pyramid.

Off topic.

Carry on.

We actually discussed something like this in one of my classes today. Teachers at all levels sometimes take an intransigent attitude, thinking that what they've done must be best and that their students are not listening, are unmotivated, are not smart enough, etc. It's really a matter of being able to step back from the situation and admit that someone else's point may be valid. It could be that she was tired or frustrated today and just couldn't take that step back. In this specific case, she was also irritated that you had pointed out that her instructions really had been at fault.

Your misunderstanding was understandable. I probably would have started at step 10 as well, at first.

If this happens often, you may want to have a conference with her to try and work out a solution.

edit: This sort of thing happens fairly often for me. The phrases I most often hear are:

"Where did you get that idea?" (Answer: Um, from you...)
"That's not right. Who told you that?" (Answer: You did, last week.)
"That's not what I meant." (Nonverbal answer: Then why did you say it?)
"I never said that." (This one's my personal favorite. I hear it a lot at work. Answer: perplexed silence, because, yes, they did.)

I would guess she meant to convey the next day you would be doing them all. And if so, she caused the problem by not being clear.

haha-so true. I can't say I use any of those, but I do use "you aren't listening to me" when I should actually be saying "TAKE ME LITERALLY!" lol

Its a power trip on the teacher's part. Give some people authority, and they think they have free reign to be impolite and treat others like crap. This happens all the time, for example drivers who are intolerant of others' driving styles and others' honest mistakes, then they flip you off or, worse, begin driving aggressively (e.g., tailgating). Most people would not behave like that in person, like when walking on the street. Unfortunately, the teacher has authority to pass or fail you. This probably occurred because the teacher was treated like crap by her/his authority figures when younger and impressionable.

How annoying. It's not just that there was a misunderstanding, but it sounds like she's being pretty intolerant.

I've had that happen to me, too. I was in university, majoring in anthropology. I was getting good grades in all of my classes (except a bunch of math classes, which I didn't even need to take). In my very last class, before I was ready to graduate, the professor assigned a project. The project was to make a poster about a social health problem. She gave us a piece of paper with some of the criteria on it, like how big it should be, and possible topics. I thought that seemed like a suspiciously simple project, considering that it counted for most of our grade, so I must be missing something. I asked her to describe a little bit more about what she was looking for, like what kind of stuff she wanted us to write on it, and she said, "Make it like the posters that you see around, about health issues." I said I had never seen anything like that, and she said, "Sure you have. They're everywhere." Well, I wasn't sure what she meant, but I thought about the kind of stuff that I might see on a bulletin board in a doctor's office or something like that. I tried to keep my eye open to see some examples around, but I never did.



I chose "Smoking while Pregnant" as my topic. I drew a fairly decent picture, and wrote a paragraph at the bottom. Then I spent a bunch of money to have it printed up at Kinko's according to the teacher's demands. I did my best to make it look like a professional quality poster, like something you might see stuck on the wall in a waiting room. On the day it was due, we had to display it for the class, and we would all go around and judge each other's work. Everyone else's project had a full-blown research project written on it, with footnotes and all that. When I told her I hadn't received that instruction, she said, "I TOLD you to make it like one of those posters you see around," or something like that. I have never, in my life, seen a poster about social health problems which has a flipping 20 page research article, with bibliography as part of it. I told her that, as politely as I could, but she wouldn't hear it. She acted like I must be the densest, stupidest person in the world, and the most irritating, to be wasting her precious time by even asking about it. I got a D on that, and a C- in the class. My overall grade point average had been very impressive up until then.

But hey, I got my anthropology degree, despite the old cow. That and five bucks will buy me a nonfat vanilla latte and a butter croissant from Starbucks.

It's a lot easier to "listen" when people give you details to clarify things.

I remember in one class the teacher told us to turn in a short paper that needed to be a page long. I thought that meant AT LEAST one page long, not exactly one page long, so i got points taken off for going a couple of sentences longer than one page. That seriously pissed me off. What was even more annoying is that the rest of the people in my class, who all apparently have psychic abilities, somehow knew that she meant exactly one page. If she had said "no more than one page" or "a maximum of one page," then i would have completely understood. I swear, NTs must have some kind of morse code type things going on with their eyebrows moving up and down or something, passing on secret messages to eachother and they didn't give us the memo. That's the only way to explain this That's how i feel, anyway.

My favorite when people don't get my message is "Don't do as you think, do as I say." Works every time.

She really said ~one page, but NTs are lazy so they try to get away with the least possible work, and she knew it, if she had said "no more than one", she would have had alot of half pages. Now the only thing they had to go on was "one page", thus they did one page, to avoid doing too much or too little.