Saying 'What?' when you heard me.

[Leroy]

Man this drives me nuts. Our last secretary was very bad at it, and our new one isn't much better. Basically they are just saying 'What? Huh? Pardon me?' or whatever just to give themselves time to process what I said. I don't need an answer in a nanosecond, take your time and think about what I said!

With our last secretary, sometimes I would just sit there and she would say 'Pardon me?' and wait a couple of seconds until she processed what I said, and she would respond, but she still said it was my fault for speaking to softly.

[Tarver]

what?

[TabascoElvis]

she still said it was my fault for speaking to softly.

so shaddup leroy is working

[Leroy]

what?

Ouch.

[Cronos]

I'm bad at this. If someone says something confusing I'll go "Whaaat?" and they'll get ticked off thinking I hadn't heard them.

[cardinalkarp]

<------- Guilty as charged

[jim]

what?

I would have bet a dime to a dollar that this would be the first response.

[Tarver]

I wanted to post the Pulp Fiction rant, but this computer's blocked.

[omaha_red]

oh man my dad does this but instead he does the "HUH?" even before
i get the sentence completed.. and now i'm starting do to it..

[maddash]

Man this drives me nuts. Our last secretary was very bad at it, and our new one isn't much better. Basically they are just saying 'What? Huh? Pardon me?' or whatever just to give themselves time to process what I said. I don't need an answer in a nanosecond, take your time and think about what I said!

With our last secretary, sometimes I would just sit there and she would say 'Pardon me?' and wait a couple of seconds until she processed what I said, and she would respond, but she still said it was my fault for speaking to softly.

A lot of times they're waiting for some visual queue from you to affirm what they thought they heard. Like sometimes I'll only "hear" the tail end of something. Like I'll hear the word "trash". My brain is processing most of the probably statements that could have been said. And I'll say "what?" to get a reaction from her. And before my wife can even repeat what she said, I'll get an idea from her facial expression that she wants me to take out the trash.

I'm sure there's some actual scientific explanation for what's going on here. Apes probably do something like this, I bet.