Somewhere between the door to the Accounting Office and the area in which my Boss and I work there is a gigantic void where all lines of communication drop in and are never seen nor heard from again.

If you were to see my office, you would think that was quite impossible since it’s less than 15 feet from one place to the other, and there are only 7 employees in the office. Yet, there it is. It’s this massive, gaping, ugly black hole.

We are not the only place that has this hole. I’ve seen it at other offices, at schools, at colleges, and there’s one so large at our nation’s capital that it almost completely blocks out the entire city of Washington, DC.

When I first starting seeing the Black Hole of Communication Doom (BHCD), I thought it was problematic but workable. After all, you just have open up lines of communication, right? Wrong. In fact, opening up one line of communication causes another line somewhere to shrivel up and die a horrible and bloody death.

Then, I started thinking that maybe BHCD was caused by not understanding how different types of personalities interact with each other. In my quest to a better understanding of personality traits and how people work, I’ve probably taken 20 or so personality tests. (In case you were wondering, I’m a control freak with a soft spot that is really good at managing multiple tasks at the same time, but I don't like to share my emotions, yet I am likely to wind up being a mediator if something starts going south.) But, what I took away from personality testing is most people don’t pay attention to themselves and how they behave, so the likelihood that they would see personality patterns in another human being is slim to none. But, really, who is surprised by this?

So, BHCD is a chronic condition within humanity; it’s not just the workplace, school, or the United States Government.

I think it’s something akin to when the Vancome Lady (Nicole Sullivan) from MadTV puts her fingers in her ears and sings at the top of her voice because she doesn’t want to hear what’s being said to her. In fact, I think we’re all a lot like her when it comes to how “the masses” behave and react.

Confrontational, offensive, prejudice, and able to turn a blind eye to the worst of situations, we, as a race, are good at our impersonations of the Vancome Lady on a mass scale. When you start following that line, it’s only a short period of time until BHCD.

So, here I sit in an office of 7 people with no idea what is going on half the time. It isn’t for lack of trying. It’s because no one is willing to take a step forward and be the first to really offer a compromise that is truly workable. Neither side would agree with this statement; they would say they’re always willing to come to some sort of workable agreement. But, it’s just not true.

Both sides are so stuck in how it “should be” that neither of them will give more than a few millimeters in any direction. I, as the one in the middle with no say in anything, just have to hope that I’m not in the crossfire when things start blazing, and I’ve learned when to duck and cover as time has progressed. But, I need the information that is being withheld, and I need the rules and regulations that aren’t being created because of BHCD.

It shouldn’t really be this way.

If everyone would just take a step back and look at the big picture, things would be so much easier. If we could just see how the “other side” sees it so that an actual compromise could be reached, we’d all be the better for it.

I don’t really foresee that happening anytime soon. I believe that our office would burn to the ground in a historic tailspin of nastiness first.

But, I’m willing to believe that anything is possible even if it’s not very probable. After all, not everyone is the cause of BHCD, and there are those out there that don’t follow the stereotypes. Maybe one of them will be the person in charge of getting things done one of these days?

Hurray for the human condition.