You know the joke…   Knock, Knock.  Who’s there? Interrupting cow. Interrupting [MOOOO!] cow who?

I find that when I’m not correcting my daughter about her tone or attitude or reminding her that she is not the adult, I am barking at her to stop interrupting.  I have been on her case about this since she was old enough to wobble into a conversation and demand attention.  I know I’m not alone in this because yesterday, I listened to Ken correct his daughter about the same exact thing.  I say it’s the age, but it seems that at 10 years old we should be approaching an age where it stops.  Well, I would say that except I notice adults doing this same thing. 

I have often been frustrated at the way manners in general have gone to hell in a hand-basket.  It’s so bad that when someone is actually polite and uses ‘yes please’ and ‘no thank you’ or opens the door for me it shines like a beacon.  It’s sad really.  What is even more frustrating is that I watch adults… people my age or older… barge into conversations and demand attention the same way my daughter did when she was toddling.  There is really no excuse.

We have a general joke around my office – we’ve used it for years and years… it’s my invisible unimportant sign.  I hold up my invisible unimportant sign whenever I am in the middle of a conversation with a coworker and someone barges in without even an ‘excuse me’ and begins talking over me.  It happens often.  Now, sometimes this is just the product of someone being desperate for information and in a hurry. In those cases, it’s pretty obvious and forgivable especially considering those offenders usually toss out a quick apology as they are rushing off to use the information they needed.  Then we have those that I refer to behind their backs as an interrupting cow.  I have worked with many of these over the years.  These are the ones that will just walk in behind me while I am discussing something work related and just begin talking over me about anything that comes to mind – usually personal – and will not quit.  Not when I glare at them… not when I say, “excuse me”… they just keep talking like I was never there. 

I’m sure you’ve run into these people.  They speak over you while you are asking the clerk something at a store or they will begin a conversation with you while you are obviously on the phone.  They are everywhere  – impatiently wondering  around with a false sense of importance and enough disrespect to everyone around them that they will stop at nothing to make sure they are noticed. What happened to these people that make them think that they or what they need to say is more interesting or necessary than anything I might be doing at the moment.  I swear, if I weren’t afraid that spectators would think I had a bad case of sudden turret’s, I would just yell “MOO!” at them until they stop and go away.