I-It, I-You, and I-Thou Relationships

479 Words2 Pages
Chapter 1 Journal Entry There are three communication styles we use to interact with other individuals: I-It Relationships, I-You Relationships, and I-Thou Relationships. The I-It Relationship involves treating others almost like objects. It is a very superficial and basic way of interacting with other parties. Their personalities, needs, emotions -among other individual traits- are disregarded due to lack of familiarity. Most relationships start as I-It Relationships and develop from there. I deal with I-It Relationships when I am at work. I am a sales associate at a high quality loose leaf tea store. Customers treat me as either a means to getting the tea that they want or a nuisance in that they want to enjoy their window shopping without the social pressure of having to make a purchase. While being in my role as a sales associate, I treat customers as numbers. As how I am conditioned by the business, my goal in every customer interaction is to get as much sales as possible. Neither the customer nor I am interested in investing effort or time in getting to know each other on a personal level. The I-You Relationship is the most common relationship style we use with people we tend to interact with on a fairly regular basis. Compared to I-It Relationships, I am treated more than an object and vice versa. When I first started working at Teavana, I had I-It Relationships with my co-workers. Because we were not familiar with each other, we used scripts to facilitate our interactions. They casted me as the simple “new girl” to train in the ways of Teavana while I casted them as my “senior colleagues” to take orders from without question. Now that we have spent more time together, we are more friendly with each other while still maintaining our roles as team members. For instance, we ask about each other’s days and celebrate each others accomplishments at work or
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