Confusion caused by delays in human communication: layman's term word or phrase

I'm looking for a general, non-technical word or phrase to describe a situation where natural delays in the timing and ordering of human communication leads to confusion and misunderstandings.

What I'm talking about is sort of similar to the "Telephone game" but depends on the order and timing of communication, rather than the quality of it.

Text messaging provides an opportunity for this: You send three text messages in a specific order, but due to how texting works, the recipient may get them in a different order than you sent them in. This could cause serious confusion and misunderstandings.

In software and hardware communication, there are ways to perform error checking and error correction to avoid these issues, but human beings are really bad at consistently following the same rules every time, and tend to take shortcuts or make assumptions.

The point is that because of natural delays in communication (email, voicemail, texting, etc) a lot of confusion and misinformation can be generated. There are technical terms for this in software engineering and system analysis, but I'm looking for a word or phrase I can use to describe this situation to laymen.

To clarify, I'm looking for a term that describes a situation where human communication delays and errors lead to an escalation of confusion, chaos, and further misunderstandings.

To clarify even further, I'm not looking for a general term for confusion or a general term for latency or delay. I'm looking for a word or phrase that can be used to quickly explain that a confusing situation has arisen specifically because of inherent delays in both communication and comprehension.

Examples: (Using barnfargle as a substitute for some other word or phrase.)

"Yesterday's meeting was a real barnfargle because Judy read the last email without reading the ones before it."

"Sam called Jerry about Judy's memo but Jerry thought Sam was talking about Judy's OTHER memo from yesterday, so they scheduled a meeting where each attendee thought it was about a separate subject. What a barnfargle that was."

These kinds of situations are quite common in business communication, but also appear when organizing a family get-together, or planning a softball team schedule. They are not specific to any technology, although technology makes more opportunities for them to happen.

The closest thing I've been able to come up with myself is "comedy of errors" but that's not quite it.

There may not be any term for this, but I think there should be.

Solution 1:

Snafu ("a situation in which nothing happens as planned and everything goes wrong–Cambridge) does not, of necessity, inherently denote "natural delays in the timing and ordering of human communication"

but

(1) considering its source (the military) and the amount of communication and logistics that are often innate to situations found within the military, the word naturally

"...can be used to quickly explain that a confusing situation has arisen specifically because of inherent delays in both communication and comprehension"

(2) one explanation of the origin of the word refers to actual communication malfunctions. See Researching the real origin of SNAFU

and

(3) it easily replaces barnfargle in both your sentences.

Solution 2:

While Paul B's answer is excellent and well documented, the common idiom I've always heard and used is getting their wires crossed.

Solution 3:

You can say 'to avoid playing telephone tag'.

This expression 'telephone tag' likens trying to communicate, to playing 'a game of tag'.

It was used in the marketing of a voicemail system that I was promo-ing, when I worked in the telecoms division of a major bank.

I think it will be easily understood by laymen.

😊

Solution 4:

When I saw your question, the first thought I had was; that's what we used to call 'playing telephone'. But (in lieu of coining a new phrase) if that's not what you're looking for, may I suggest an even more ancient idiom:

"Tower of Babel"

Literally, when Old-Testament God confounded everyone's speech so they couldn't understand each other anymore.

Used metaphorically for generations (before technology complicated it even more) to describe similar situations.