Merge like a zip - what does it mean to you? A thought about perception.

How many times have you heard that saying? When joining the motorway, merge like a zip.

Hundreds? Thousands? But do you actually know what it means?

I was ranting to a friend recently about Auckland traffic and she and I had quite different ideas of what this means.

She said, something along the lines of yeah, people need to take those holes that open up. I was flabbergasted. WHAT? Those people are the ones that cause the problems.

Merging like a zip to me means going right to the end of the merging lane, and going between the cars that are there. Just like the zip below. If you take one of those gold bits out, it causes the zip to stop. 

So I got home and I googled and I found that in traffic management both ways are acceptable ways of 'merging like a zip', but the 'late' merge is much more time efficient and causes less hold ups. I felt a tiny bit vindicated. But it made me think....

Even before this communication miscommunication, I had another conversation with a friend years ago when we were explaining to a foreigner what 'Tall poppy syndrome" meant. She came up with a totally different version to what I thought. Again I went home and googled it. Thinking goodness me, how can we both get such different ideas to the same words. 

And this latest one (merging like a zip) has me thinking..... if we are all going through life, talking the same language, but meaning totally different things, how on earth are we all going to get on? And heaven forbid, what if we don't speak the same language and are trying to communicate? Well easy, we don't.

Add in things like the internet/email where we talk off the top of our heads without much thought going into it as we hide between our computer screen and quite frankly you have a mix which is ripe for disaster.

So here I am putting some thoughts out to the world, encouraging you to put a little more distance between your words and reactions. If we all took a little more time to question and understand each other, we might all get along a bit better too?

Side note: Nothing 'bad' has happened to me to write this, no falling outs, no issues. But it's really made me think about what we all say, and how it can be interpreted so very differently. Perhaps we all need to take the time to question more than try to solve/fix things that aren't actually fixable or needing to be fixed?

Have a wonderful issue free day all!

Comments

[mandyb]

Ohhh its just like people who don't indicate at roundabouts grrrrrrr

[Lianne]

Merge like a zip...hummmm we have had new traffic lights installed in nelson and the sign by them says merge like a zip. I dont think Nelsonians know what a zip is otherwise the traffic would flow rather than stalling...I test now, if i leave a big gap in front of me, then the people behind me tend to do the same...funny.