Mdthbs

What's a work-appropriate way to say "Please stop talking and let me
work"?

Once they state the request, repeat it back to them and then say:

Do I understand the requirement/change correctly?

If they say yes:

You say "Great, now let me get this done for you", then turn from them and start working.

If not continue the dialog with the person making the request until they agree that you understand the request and then state:

"Great, now let me get this done for you", then turn from them and start working.

A word of caution, be sure to use a respectful tone as this person is your manager.

The key to this working of course is making certain the person making the request knows that you understand their needs. My educated guess is the person communicating with you is uncertain of your understanding of the new requirement or change.

In short: Make sure the person making the request knows you understand the need by repeating the request back to them.

An alternate approach: Another approach you could take is to ask them to email you the request so that you are certain nothing get's missed. This approach allows you to show you care about the requirement while putting the onus on them to give you the details in writing.

What's a work-appropriate way to say "Please stop talking and let me work"?

I'd suggest, don't say that verbally, let your actions speak for you.

Question: Do you know why they are being repeatative ? Do they feel you did not understand enough? Do they feel you're not paying enough attention?

Thing is, you need to make it clear to them that you understood the requirement clearly and not in need for further clarification.

So,

• listen attentively


• take notes if necessary


• and, once they finish providing the instructions, you can try saying:

"Thanks for explaining that. So I need to do X, and to get that done I need to
change P,Q,R and add Y to Z. Finally, the outcome should be X. Is my understanding correct?"

This is a method called "brief back", one of the popular tools in effective communication. This way they will have confidence that you understood the requirement clearly and in case there is a gap / mistake, they will get to correct it.

The outcome:

• If they say "yes" and move on, that's the intended result.


• 
  

  If they still continue to explain, ask them politely

  
  
  

  
  

  "Yes, but I think we covered that already, is there anything else you'd like to add?"

  
  

  
  
  

  Use different variants, to the best of your wisdom, based on the person / situation.

  
  

Educate your boss and get those requirements written down because verbal requirements aren't formal requirements and therefore don't count.

After about the second or third requirement, say

Ok, I'm probably going to forget these requirements or miss things because I'm working and listening at the same time. Could you please write these up and email them to me, and then I'll work on them all at the same time.

Then go grab a coffee while he walks back to his desk.

If any of those emailed requirements don't make sense, or contradict, then answer the email and request clarification. You now have a paper-trail.

I’d recommend just asking them to have the conversation over chat. You can explain that that way you’re able to refer back to the discussion as needed. Also, it’s important that your requirements be documented - so, when you do have the conversation, if your team uses a project management software, ask that your colleague write down the requirements somewhere.

Documenting requirements is hugely important. I live by the rule that “if it’s not in {tracking software}, it doesn’t exist”. This provides you with reference material to ensure you’re building and testing the right product, and it gives the designer an audit trail if anything happens to go wrong at the end and they want to know if they asked for a feature or functionality.

What I learned from the military is to keep your answers short, yes, no, and I don't know. Do not make eye contact and focus on what you're doing. This can be done nicely. The employer will see that he is interrupting your work at the least.

First off, there are a bunch of polite ways to cut off a conversation - and putting on headphones isn't one of them. You'll want to Google up that part, as it's a bit orthogonal to your main question, and is a huge topic in it's own right.

If they're repeating something multiple times, there's probably a reason as I can guarantee they have better things to do. I don't really know you, but from my past interactions with Junior programmers, I'd hazard the guess that the first couple of times they didn't do this, and you messed something up on a fundamental level.

That's OK, it's part of learning, and the only way out of it is building trust that you can handle things without quite so much hand-holding. A great way to do this is being up front about your limitations and what decisions are above your pay grade.

Something like this has worked well for me:

OK, so you need me to <repeat back their request, in your own words>?

[Wait for confirmation]

I'm currently doing <current task>, does this have higher priority?

[If yes] Great, can you add this to the ticket while I get started on <first part of request>?

[If not] Great, I want to make sure this doesn't fall through the cracks, can you add this to the ticket while I finish up <current task>?

Putting up the headphone is an extremely rude thing, and it is unimaginable in the developed world. If you do it, either you should work by a very... problematic company, you should be very young, or you should live in a quite unlucky country.

Managers are your bosses. If they want to talk you, instead of working, then you should talk to them.

That you were on meeting with a boss 5 hours that day, thus you could work only 3 hours, is their responsibility and not yours. You can politely warn them, once. If you have to do thing "X" for tomorrow, and the manager is talking to you since an hour, then you can warn the manager: "Sorry I need to do X until tomorrow, if we continue the talk, probably I won't be ready".

You have the option to leave a workplace because the too many meeting, but you have no option to directly reject a workplace task. If the manager is coming to you to talk, then your workplace task is to listen him, and be cooperative with him.

Furthermore, listening headsets on the workplace is a bad practice, because it isolates you. If you listen the headset that also others can hear it, and possibly annoy them, then you are incompatible with a professional workplace.

Alternatively, I can also imagine that you know/can something what makes you crucial for them, and thus they can't fire you.

• Having too many meetings/boss talks is a common problem, particularly on IT workplaces, so it is strong position for you.


• The headset and the direct rudeness is strongly against you.


• The open rejection of your workplace obligatories is a reason to fire you.

The sum of these is, if they would fire you on the spot, you couldn't say that any unexpected has happened to you.