I am currently in a job role in which I have only a handful of people that I deal with on a regular basis. It is mostly contact by email, although I will speak to them on the phone if appropriate. I am the singular point of contact for these people, they know me by name and I them, the same.
So, I know their names and I've heard most of their voices. But I've never met them. I don't know what they look like. It's slightly weird. I kind of imagine most people to be older, or more experienced, or more senior than me. I don't really know why that is. There's no reason why the person on the other end of the email isn't just as young as me, or have equivalent experience to me. There's a necessity to be professional at times, but sometimes I find it strange to speak so professionally with someone who is essentially, just like me. Hey, we could even be friends?
It's weird, to think that the person I am speaking to is not some Big Corporate Person, but could just be a graduate girl in her twenties, someone I could have known at university, someone I could bump into on a Saturday night. It's weird, to think, that I could encounter these people and not even know that they are the person I speak to on a weekly basis. It's not unreasonable that I could be in the same bars or shops if ever I were in the area. I wouldn't even know it. I could pass them in the street and not even know it.
Isn't that kind of odd? So for work, as for the internet. It's the bizarro world we live in, getting to know people before you meet them. Very strange.
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I'd say it's better not to meet the person before getting to know them. You're avoiding all the judgements you make based on their appearance and you're just finding out who they are.
ReplyDeleteIs there anything stopping you from meeting these people face-to-face?
I think it depends, you lose out on so much by only interacting via email - tone, body language, details, reactions - it's a lot slower way to get to know someone. That's not to say I don't think it's nice to have it that way around, I just don't think it's necessarily better.
ReplyDeleteI don't meet them face-to-face as it's not part of my role. I don't need to meet them to do my job, so I don't get to do so.