Sometimes what we intend to communicate and what the other person understands out of our communication can be poles apart – at tangent.
At times the result of miscommunication can be laughable but it may also cause losses… Life goes on and we keep learning from such mishaps.
Through the column ‘Lighter Moments’…, I would like to share a few of my experiences with the readers.
As a buying agent, I was working with an exporter in Mumbai. It was around 1990. Fluorescent pens were a novelty – people just started to use these pens. I had a lot of print developments with a factory. The merchandiser was smart, sharp and fast. She kept on sending developments to the artist. Obviously in our industry every thing is “urgent”. So it became one “urgent” development after another “urgent” development…
This was when we had a production design which really got to be taken on priority. So this lady (merchandiser), very neatly put the print in an envelope, and marked it TOP URGENT and to emphasize this, she HIGHLIGHTED it with a fluorescent marker.
The package was delivered to the artist by the office boy. After 3-4 days, when the tracing did not arrive, we personally checked with the artist and we found that he very wisely had kept the highlighted TOP URGENT development aside – thinking that the highlighted actually meant ‘striking off’, meaning… i.e., it was not urgent… !!
So he carried on with other prints designs and the production of the actual “urgent” one got delayed.
Who is smart…? Do I laugh (or tear my hair)… in retrospect, of course… one smiles… but trust me, at that time it was not funny…!
In this next instance, let us see who bears/shares the brunt of miscommunication.
I was working for a UK importer in UAE. Again this was around 1989 – telexes still existed – fax machine were just “invented”. Emails belonged to the future…
Those were the days when garment production was in a nascent stage. The factories were novices and not as professional as they are today. They were acting merely as job working factories. Everything had to be imported and hence we (UK importer) had nominated suppliers for fabric in Hong Kong. We had to spoon-feed the factories – ordering materials, taking care of LCs, import formalities and of course production…
My colleague (not me!) made a purchase request for fabric, on behalf of factory – to the mills in Hong Kong. The sweat shirt order had three combos – Blue, Green and Wine. After about 45 days when we received the fabric in Dubai, we were shocked to find that we got Grey combo instead of Green…
Hell broke loose…
We started calling the fabric mills in Hong Kong and the supplier kept insisting that the supply was “as per order”. After going through the communication in details we realized that Green could have been interpreted as Grey. Writing (scribbling) error or the supplier could not read it properly as the colour was scribbled as Green and read as Grey…!
Thankfully… today we do business in a more organized manner where colour goes by pantone references… bulk dyeing cannot start without approved lab dips, scans and digis help to keep a clear record of colours… and though all this adds to making the pace of business faster and faster… it also helps with complete transparency in all stages of supply chain…!
I believe I was and am smart… and say so with all humility… HA HA!
But this is what happened when what I thought was smart was actually my misconception…
We had just started to use fax machines. International calls were very expensive those days… Hence we started to use short words – to save on “matter”, to save on telephone bills. Our main customer was in Germany. Of course they were great to work with… but had certain limitations on communication in the Queens language. The merchandiser with the customer did not understand the word “hnc” in my fax communication. The next day I was expecting an answer from her while I got a query from her asking what does “hnc” means. I started to laugh at myself and realized that I lost one crucial day of my communication by trying to abbreviate hence into hnc…!
It was a lesson learnt to be always very clear and precise in all important communications… since truly communication is one important key to the success of our business… Communication plays a very important role and we need to look at the other person for whom it is intended for and “talk” the same language.
So dear readers… Who is to be blamed for miscommunication?
Of course the initiator and not the recipient…
For once DON’T LAUGH IT OFF!!
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
