Communication
Communication
There is a day I had visited a nearby store as I wanted to buy a pair of shoes. When I got to the shop, there was this attendant of Asian accent, probably from China or Japan. I was not really sure about what I wanted, so I had many questions. However, I realized that the attendant was avoiding eye contact. At first, I ignored the behavior and kept talking, hoping that the attendant will eventually realize that I was anticipating eye contact. However, to my disappointment, there never came a time that the attendant even attempted to keep eye contact. During every occasion that she would look up and realized that my eyes were fixed on her as we were having the conversation, she would quickly turn her gaze elsewhere. This behavior made me very uncomfortable and I had very many questions crossing my mind as I left the store.
Interpretation
My initial interpretation was that the attendant had no interest in serving me. I am a strong believer in the fact that for a good conversation to take place people have to maintain eye contact. With eye contact, someone can be able to get much more about what is being communicated than just words. There are some aspects of communication such as emotions that cannot be communicated through verbal communication. One of the reasons as to why the attendant would have no interest in proper communication is either disrespect of insincerity. When someone is disrespectful of another, they will have less intention of maintaining eye contact when they are communicating. Maybe she assumed that I was simply window-shopping and was not in any way interested in buying a pair of shoes. I also thought that she might be avoiding eye contact because she was not sincere. When someone is not sincere, it is easier to tell it through their eyes because the eyes are not as good in lying as the mouth is, so she might have had the fear that if she maintained eye contact, I would be able to realize that there was something wrong with the information that she was giving me.
Evaluation
With a deeper evaluation of the situation, someone might be able to get a different interpretation of the attendant’s behavior. Given the fact that she is clearly from a different culture, she might have a different understanding of eye contact from mine. In some cultures, especially in Asia eye contact is always seen as rude and disrespectful. This is an indication that people of such cultural backgrounds are likely to avoid maintaining eye contact as a sign of respect for the people that they communicate with. This is the exact opposite of my culture. Therefore, it can be said that the difference between my cultural background and that of the attendant made it impossible for us to effectively communicate. Sometimes it is always not good to judge communication entirely from our own cultural perspective, but try to see it from the perspective of the people with whom we communicate. This might be a way through which we can avoid misunderstandings that might arise because of the differences in cultural beliefs and practices. There is a high possibility that if I would have realized that it is the cultural gap that was making communication difficult, then the communication would have been completely different.
