Who stole my shoes? Clear vs direct communication

I'm a yogi.  Meaning I practice yoga almost every day.  And I've adopted some of the broader yogic traditions as well.  Normally this bothers no one, but apparently one of the minor traditions that I've adopted caused my neighbor some grief recently and she chose to communicate this to me.  Very clearly, albeit not so directly.  Once I got over the shock of it all I thought what a great illustration of how clear vs direct communication can screw things up in the workplace.

You see, I don't like shoes in my apartment.  I take mine off and leave them at the door and I ask others to do the same.  Sometimes there can be 10 pairs of shoes outside of my door.  My apartment is in a very quiet building and sits at the end of the hallway by itself.  In fact, there are only 2 other apartments on the same floor as mine.  One is inhabited by a woman well into her 90's whom I rarely see.  The other a single woman who looks to be about 50 something. 

One morning I was running out the door to a client meeting, on the verge of being late, and I stopped dead in my tracks!  My shoes were gone!  Completely gone! No where to be seen.  Were they stolen?  Who would steal used shoes?  Where did they go?  I started to feel almost violated, then hurt, then worried that I'd upset someone else (one of my neighbors?) then angry! 

More than 2 weeks later I can't enter or leave my apartment without thinking of the great shoe caper and it doesn't feel nice. 

I later found all 10 pairs by my rubbish bin.  Thankfully, they weren't in the rubbish bin, rather stacked beside it.  I asked my property manager if he'd taken them and he said no, no one had complained about them.  The only thing I can think is that one of my neighbors got tired of looking at them and decided to take matters into her own hands. 

Whom ever did it, the message was clear.  Someone was not happy about my shoes being spread out in the hallway (granted they were rarely lined up neatly).  But their clear communication left me puzzled, upset and angy. 

Had they chosen another way to communicate, a more direct way (say a note under my door or stopping me in the hall one day) I wouldn't have felt any of those things.  The shoes would have been removed immediately and I would have felt good about taking care of something that was causing someone else to feel bad.  Win win.

But I find that most people communicate clearly instead of directly.  Whether it's to avoid 'confrontation' (which almost never has the repercussions you think it will) or hurting someone's feelings, I find that most people would rather communicate clearly (and sometimes what you think is a clear message is anything but to the recipient) instead of directly. 

And most of the time, the very thing you try to avoid happening with direct communication happens anyway (and sometimes much worse) with clear communication.

How do you communicate to your staff?  How do you communicate to your boss? 

I urge you to give direct communication a try.  Just for 30 days.  See what happens.  I've seen miracles happen and I bet you will too.