Izzit yeah?

I have been sat here counting the number of times CJ says ‘yeah’ in her phone conversations (things are pretty slow today) and on the last call it was 58. No exaggeration. I think 23 of those were in her sign off as well.

“So yeah, yeah, I hope we can yeah, yeah……yeah? Well if we can sort that out then…yeah. Anyway, yeah, how have things been yeah? Yeah? Yeah, yeah…of course it’s like that isn’t it? Yeah, yeeeeeah, yeah, yeah, yeah….yeah…….yeah. Yeah. Right yeah, well yeah I will speak to you soon yeah? Yeah. Bye then. Yeah.”

I emailed Gunner who sits opposite her:


From: Nancy Clueless
Sent: 04 August 2010 16:34
To: Gunner
Subject: Yeah

“Yeah? Yeah….yeah….yeah? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah….”

Expand on your vocab a bit luv.



From: Gunner
Sent: 04 August 2010 16:35
To: Nancy Clueless
Subject: RE: Yeah


Yeah


Sums it up I think. I’m not sure if it’s some kind of nervous oral twitch (easy) of hers or if she just has nothing better to say or is shit at general conversation or has just picked it up as a bad habit. Probably the latter, I know of a few people who do the same thing. I have found myself saying the work ‘like’ a lot more in my sentences which I am deeply ashamed of. I sound like a bloody toff kid “So like I was like at the bus stop like…” Well maybe I’m not that bad but it’s getting there. I have a friend who says “Sort of” or “Sort of thing” all the time which once you start to notice it can be really annoying – again a bad habit he’s picked up. There was also a girl who shared a house with some uni mates years ago who said “Izzit” to EVERYTHING you said to her.

“I went to the cinema last night”
“Izzit?”
“Saw a great film with whassisface in”
“Izzit?”
“Cost me £7 though, bloody rip off”
“Izzit?”

That response makes no sense. “Izzit” being derived from “Is it” and every time she said this she posed it as a question so asking me “Is it?” after telling her I went to the cinema is just plain baffling. She also used to say it in a long drawn out sing song voice that made you want to clamp your hand over her mouth after about 5 minutes of conversation.

“Um” can also be a trifle irritating. I find that pops up a lot in work presentations, especially if the speaker is nervous. I once attended a conference and we had these god awful boring workshops to go to throughout the day which got worse and worse. One of them was especially dull and the girl presenting said “um” over 50 times in her 10 minute talk. I think every sentence was littered with it. I started to tally them up on my note pad, which my colleague noticed and then realised what I was doing. As soon as the realisation dawned she burst into a fit of giggles which only unnerved the speaker more and created an avalanche of ‘um’s’ in the concluding part of the Power Point presentation.

CJ wins the award for most aggravating vocal disability though because her ‘yeah’s’ are dripping with a patronising tone. It’s like someone talking down to a tiny kid or old person “Did you hurt your arm? Did you? Yeah, yeah you did didn’t you?” Or like she is agreeing with everything you say just to placate you and pretend she is interested. It’s worse for us as well because we only hear one side of the conversation. I have no idea how her clients the other end of the phone take it.

“Er CJ would you stop saying ‘yeah’ all the time please?”
“Yeaaaahhh”
“It’s actually really irritating.”
“Yeah? Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m hanging up on you now.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeeeaaaahhhhh.”
Dialing tone.
“Yeah.”