Me: What time do you think you'll be home?
Wife: Um, well, first I need to do x, and then I need to go
to y, which will probably take an hour. And then I might
swing by z.
Me: So what time do you think you'll be home?
I am not a boss, but quite opposite. But often find myself answering the same way. And later just putting myself into boss's position find that this was not the best answer. Straight and simple yes/not/[number]/today/now/tomorrow much better. Reserve informal talk to a lunch with boss.
Bosses seem to hate being forced to reason out the answer, even if it should be readily apparent from what you said.
If you're annoyed and want to annoy them back, you can do the reasoning for them to point out how simple it is, e.g. "three days from now is Thursday" or "not being able to speak would make meetings useless, therefore I will not be able to take any."
ts not a second its closer to several minutes of back and forth. 2 min times 40 enteractions a day, is almost hour and a half of bosses time you wasted.
theres a reason why communication needs to be more concise, more summary, aggregated as it moves up hierarchy.
also as boss i trust you with details. i usually dont need to hear them.
Fair, but the backstory is that I'd told my boss about the surgery (he'd asked about the particulars) about three dozen times prior to that conversation. Some of the seemingly extraneous info ("removing a gland from my neck") was added here, per very slight artistic license, to convey information to the readers that was actually mentioned in previous conversations.
"Just to remind you, I will be out next week until Thursday. I let the team know, and declined all the meetings scheduled"
all the other details are unnecessary. Let em know what they need to know, and take care of things that need addressed before you go out.