My girl friend Bonnie asked me to share this with you. Most people who use smartphones, speaker phones, and conference call systems, do not realize that only one person can talk at a time.

It is called unidirectional audio. It means that the audio can only be heard in one direction. If you are talking, the person on the other end of the cell, or speakerphone, cannot interrupt you and vice versa.

It is important for you to know that when someone is talking to you, he or she cannot hear you if you try to interrupt. You have to wait for that person to stop.

Why am I telling you this? That’s easy. Bonnie and I realized tonight that most of our friends do not know this. We are so used to talking over each other, that some of our phone buddies are missing parts of our conversations.

I know about unidirectional audio because I conduct a lot of conference calls. I noticed a long time ago that if my client is speaking, he cannot hear others trying to interrupt him.

So now you know what we know. Be sure to wait for the other person to stop talking, no matter how painful that is. Otherwise you are talking to yourself.