Fog free

Returning from a lovely European honeymoon, my husband and I recently took a connecting flight out of Chicago to Baltimore. Once we arrived at O’Hare, we checked the monitors along our way to the gate, and they told us the flight was scheduled to depart on time. When we got to the gate, the sign said the same. We settled into the waiting area chairs and watched the minutes tick by.

It soon became clear that our flight would not depart on time, despite the sign that still told us it would. Several people went up to talk to the customer service representative at the desk. Soon after, she got on the microphone and said, “Attention, passengers on Flight XXXX, we don’t know where your plane is and we don’t know where the crew is so we can’t tell you when the flight will leave.”

Really.

I know you all have been in this waiting area. A low rumble of grumbling ensued. One woman near us declared to her husband that she was going to go get a beer. And she did.

My husband and I just looked at each other. Was the plane delayed in Timbuktu? Having mechanical difficulties? Would it ever arrive? And what about that crew? Were they all sick? Lost? Sitting out in their own small strike? Anything could have been going on and none of us had any idea if we should start diving for alternative flights, sit tight, or burst into tears.

B. went to talk to the customer service representative, who had been making “woe is me” faces while talking to other puzzled passengers. When he came back, he was smiling but it wasn’t a “problems all solved” kind of a smile, more of a “what the heck?!” kind of a smile. It turns out that the plane was coming from a hangar and the crew was in the airport just not to the gate yet.

Next thing we know, she comes on to tell us that exact information and then that there will be “decision time” at the orginal time of take-off. Decision time? What did that mean? The flight had a plane and a crew. And a whole bunch of passengers who were all decided. What more did we need?

The upshot was that the plane arrived, the crew arrived, and we took off about 45 minutes later than scheduled.

Why am I writing about this? Because it is a textbook example of a lesson all writers (and other communicators) need to learn from the time they write their first sentences. Be specific. Do not lose your readers (or passengers) in a big dense cloud of ambiguity and uncertainty.

Readers want to know even more than we passengers did that day. They want you to paint a picture with words that allows them to see what you are writing about, to understand it clearly, to take it in. And for the sake of your client, if you are being paid to write something, you want your readers to clearly understand what your client wants to communicate.

It’s also a great public relations lesson. When the news isn’t good, it may be better to lay it out than to give out information that only results in shaking heads and a room full of frustration. It was far better for us to hear the plane and crew were there but delayed than to hear that seemingly no one knew where the heck either was.

Take a lesson from our hapless customer service representative. Don’t fog up your words when you have specific information at hand and a means to communicate it. Make your communication fog-free. Your readers and your clients will thank you.