Member-only story
Hey Co-Worker: Stop Ignoring My Damn Emails
Your rudeness and incompetence does not go unnoticed
Imagine for a second that we know each other personally and we work in the same office. I come up to you in the cafeteria and say hello and how’s it going, before trying to talk to you about something I need from you in order to complete a task. Something that is in your job description and well within your capabilities. We work together all the time, so this wouldn’t be a surprise or unwelcome in any way.
Now imagine that instead of talking to me, you look straight at me, then turn and walk away without saying a word.
In literally every culture in the world, acting in such a way would be considered rude as shit. Even for a movie character who is the supposed “cool guy”, acting in that kind of way wouldn’t be seen as funny, it would be used to show him as a total douche on the way to him getting his comeuppance.
And yet, every day in the business world, this happens with emails. I’ve literally lost count of the amount of times that I’ve sent someone an email only to have it flat out ignored. It’s legitimately a regular occurrence not just for me, but for a bunch of people I know, to the point that I find myself wondering what the hell is going on in the world, because there always seems to be an excuse given by other people for their behaviour.
- “Everyone is busy, you shouldn’t take it personally.”
- Maybe they just forgot about it or accidentally deleted it.”
- “Oh, maybe you should have gone over and talked to them, or given them a call.”
- “They’re under a lot of pressure you know, they get hundreds of emails a day.”
I even had a manager call and give me a blasting once for failing to meet a customer deadline because his staff (3 of them!) failed to answer one of my emails. I should have followed up more with them, because apparently my job, unbeknownst to me, is to be their personal assistant.
Talk about low expectations.
It wouldn’t be an issue if people sent an email or even a text message in reply, saying “hey, really busy right now with higher priority things — when do you need this by?” Really, even a message…
