The pleasantries are generally ‘Good morning. How are you? … Fine, thanks.’ ‘Okay, thanks, nice talking to you’. My point is that I have never had a phone call that lasted less than a minute and I can whip out an email in fifteen seconds (I can type). “Good morning - do you have the dates of the last three EC meetings? TY.”
The real benefit to email is that of course the recipient does not have those dates at the finger tip, but will have to look them up. S/he can look them up and get back to me when it is convenient.
However, you have a point about people reading their emails when they cannot respond and never getting back to them. Stupid annoying habit.
But never leave me a voice mail - I never remember to check it.
People can be pretty stupid, but I don’t think the example in the OP is necessarily indicative of stupidity. Obviously I don’t know the person and whether this is a consistent pattern with them or not.
But it’s an example of a lack of attention to detail, which can have any number of causes. We live in a world where we’re completely overwhelmed with information, much of it irrelevant or rambling, so out of necessity we gloss over a lot of it. Generally careful and meticulous people such as you and I, Anaamika, consistently pick up and retain more than the average Joe, and noting this can certainly be frustrating. But can you honestly say you’ve never missed something important that was said to you because your thought train took your attention off the speaker? It’s about 100 times worse with e-mail, because it’s generally seen as a lower-priority form of communication and many people have countless e-mails to churn through every day. And I really don’t want to burst your balloon, but it’s possible that your particular e-mail may not seem nearly as important to someone else as it is to you.
You’re clearly an intelligent, conscientious person who pays great attention to detail. In my book, that makes you awesome and among the linchpins of society. But getting frustrated/annoyed at others for not displaying the same traits is worse than a fruitless endeavour - it actually harms you (and only you).
One thing that’s certain though is that they’re not doing it to annoy you. They are probably just overwhelmed. I don’t know if the person in the OP is overwhelmed because they have much more on their plate that is higher priority for them, or because they just process the world at a slower rate than you. But whatever the case, if you take the high road and show some patience and forgiveness (and I know it ain’t easy sometimes) you’ll feel a hell of a lot better at the end of the day. I speak from personal experience.
My advice here, guaranteed to save you Dopers much time, is NEVER use the “send e-mail” option of the “Contact Us” choice on a companies’ troubleshooting website. The cretin who reads these emails will never ever read more than the first sentence, and base his advice solely on that.
This happens 100% of the time, no matter how clearly you try to delineate each piece of information in your email.
I work in a lab that receives pathology specimens, and take lots of phone calls requesting supplies. Nine times out of ten, the requester is down to their very last whatever or they’re completely out, and we need to get them something ASAP. Why does everyone wait until it’s a damn emergency? I hate to think how these people deal with buying their household toilet paper.
Most emails are hurridly written, rarely double checked for accuracy, and then become one of a hundred(s) unread to plow through before 9:00am.
I depended on emails sent from Asia to the US for tons of critical time sensitive issues that had to be answered overnight owing to time zones (and it usually wasn’t practical to call unless I wanted to be on the phone every evening at 10:00 pm). A couple of key things I learned really helped getting productive email responses.
state the request in the first sentence and usually in the subject line
then explain or give background if needed
I find bullet points much more effective than paragraphs
make it really simple for the person to make a decision, find all supporting information, have a background, etc, to forestall the “need more info because I’m clearing my inbox right now” punt
If you can, one subject per email
For example, emails like the following had a much greater success rate of being answered in a timely fashion:
Subject line: URGENT, need yes/no answer today on Widget pricing
Dear Boss from Hell
Answer this fucking question yes or no? Deadline is today.
You need to make a yes/no answer on this really important question TODAY because
reason 1
reason 2
reason 3
Here is the background blah blah blah and see the attached emails for more detail.
Say Supervisor sends out an email about The Mission to Subordinate, and Subordinate replies, asking for information about The Mission that was in the original email. Supervisor simply does not respond, and goes about his/her day.
Next week, Boss asks Subordinate why he/she failed The Mission, and Subordinate says that Supervisor did not give him/her all the information. Supervisor can show Boss the email containing the information about The Mission, the Subordinate gets fired for be an idiot.