A coworker kept finishing her sentences in meetings — so she turned the habit into a guessing game and embarrassed him
'By week three, Pete had started catching himself mid-interruption and stopping,' they said.
Anyone who spends enough time in meetings knows the frustration of trying to explain something while another person keeps jumping in before the thought is finished. That exact situation led one employee to try a surprisingly subtle strategy that eventually changed the dynamic in their workplace meetings. Posting under the username u/n1cole_briarfield on Reddit, the employee, a project manager, explained that one particular coworker had developed a persistent habit of stepping in and completing their sentences whenever they began speaking during discussions.
The person said the interruptions had been happening for nearly a year. During meetings, whenever they began explaining an idea or outlining a project detail, the coworker — referred to as Pete — would jump in and attempt to finish the thought before the explanation was complete. "He wasn't doing it aggressively; it seemed more like an impulse, but the effect was that I'd start to explain something, and by the time I got to the actual point, Pete had already said something adjacent to it, and the room had moved on," the post read. The user recalled mentioning the issue casually at one point, but the explanation they received suggested Pete saw the situation differently.
"He said he was just 'trying to keep things moving,'" the post explained. Most people who spend time in meetings know exactly how frustrating it feels to be cut off before finishing a thought. For instance, workplace productivity research shows that knowledge workers are interrupted about 15 times per hour, and these frequent interruptions can make tasks take 15% to 24% longer to complete, underscoring how disruptive constant interjections can be in professional settings. Instead of continuing to compete for speaking time or attempting to rush through explanations, the employee decided to experiment with a different approach. "Instead of trying to talk faster or finish before he could interrupt, I started deliberately pausing after about half a sentence — mid thought, sometimes mid clause — and just looking at him with a neutral expression and waiting," they said.
The silence almost always triggered Pete to jump in and guess what the sentence was going to be. Those guesses, however, rarely matched the actual point. Whenever that happened, the author calmly clarified the original idea. "Not quite — what I was going to say was," they would respond before finishing the explanation. At first, the meetings continued without anyone acknowledging what was happening. The pauses and incorrect guesses simply became part of the conversation flow.
Eventually, though, the pattern became noticeable. "One of my colleagues mentioned after a meeting that she'd noticed Pete kept guessing where I was going and kept being wrong. Then another person mentioned it. By week three, Pete had started catching himself mid-interruption and stopping," the post read. The coworker started catching himself during interruptions and stopping before completing the sentence. The habit has not disappeared entirely, but the pauses now last longer as the interruptions have lessened.
"The meetings are noticeably better. I never had to have a single direct conversation about it," the employee said. The story drew attention from other Reddit users who were familiar with the challenge of being interrupted in workplace discussions. u/ahawk99, "Say this while looking them straight in the eyes and with a dead sarcastic voice: 'I'm sorry did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?'" u/craziness-69 responded enthusiastically, writing, "You're my hero. As a person who hates being interrupted, I love this approach."
More on Scoop Upworthy
Mansplaining coworker kept interrupting teacher's class until her comeback had students cheering
Woman brilliantly cuts off man who kept interrupting her presentation: 'I’m not done speaking'
Share on Facebook
