Me: Are you joining us for this gathering?

Friend: I’ll see how it goes…

Me: Ok, let us know once you’ve made up your mind.

But we’ll never get the answer and in the end this friend of us did not turn up.

Oh well, maybe he’s caught up with something…so the next time we still send him an invitation and as usual we would ask for his reply. And he always gives an uncertain answer and then later not turning up. Eventually we all know this guy’s response. His “see how it goes” answer means he’s not coming. But why didn’t he just say he’s not coming? It’s just a casual social gathering; it’s absolutely all right if you don’t want to participate. You just have to say so.

Just when we finally understood his way of responding, we took his uncertain answer as a declining answer, he just turned up in one of the events later. Everyone was kind of shocked.

One of my senior coworkers at work also behaves like that. I could remember during one of my discussions with my boss, she suddenly mentioned this. By the way, her facial expression made me giggled when bringing this issue to me.

Boss: Have you discussed this with him? What did he say?

Me: ……

Boss: He never says “No”. But I know he has a certain tone for a “No” answer without saying it is a “No”.

Are you one of these people who never give out a clear response/answer? Nevertheless I’m sure you know some people who behave like this. I just never understand; is it that difficult to give a clear answer. It’s not like they are really uncertain. They just somehow find it difficult to say “NO” and end up giving you a different answer, which later on you shockingly find out it’s indeed an “NO” answer! Of course I have come across instances of getting a vague answer that means “YES” too. But this happens more frequently for the “NO” situation.

I have no problem with the “I’m not sure. Can I come back to you later?” answer, as long as you really meant what you said, which is you’re not decided yet and will come back with an answer as soon as you’ve got it. That’s how I comprehend this type of answer. However, I was told that some people actually perceive this uncertainty as an already negative answer. I was pretty shocked to hear the different perception each individual perceive from this answer. Yeah, the darn perception we all set again! Yet, since we perceive things differently, how am I supposed to know what did you mean in your vague answer? As such, I have become a bit thick-skinned, whenever I get a vague response, I would usually ask, “Do you mean a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” I might be bold, but I just don’t want to get a different meaning and react inappropriately. However, it might be a little worthless in interacting with certain individuals because they still keep you detouring in roundabouts despite your attempts to confirming with their response. In that case, what can we do? Probably nothing much…we’ve done out part and that’s only so much we could do. So we just stick with our plans that we feel more comfortable with.

I personally do not give out vague answer. I really mean what I said in my answer. If I sense/see the confusion in the person, I tend to repeat my answer and make sure the person really gets it. If you can make it simple and save someone’s trouble now, why keep others guessing? Sure, it’s not that troublesome for gatherings. You can always prepare a serving or two extra. But what if it’s something more severe than just food?