An email carries with it many meanings for me that I do not and will not ever take for granted. Like it means someone was thinking of me, that someone thought I was important enough for them to chisel out a piece of time from their life, to sit down and communicate with me. Sort of like when we used to sit down with pen and paper to write a letter to a friend but without the pen, the paper, the envelope, the stamp, the licking and mailing. Gee, that's probably why emails caught on so well!
Over the past couple of years I have become more aware that my friends do not read emails. Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say that they probably read them but fail to respond to all items of inquiry within. Admittedly I do send some pretty long emails from time to time. A close friend in Durango CO crowned me "Mr. Wordy" after many communications in which my advice was asked for and I responded profusely! LOL!
Emails are a wonderful way to communicate setting aside the need to be very specific and then some times things are not received as they were sent. You can't show your body language or facial expressions within an email and that sometimes makes a world of difference in what you are trying to get across. But I'm getting off the subject here and that part of emails is fodder for someone else to blog about, my gig here today is about thoroughness.
Regardless even when I greatly reduce the amount of words it seems that, for the most part, the first half of the email is responded to and the rest is left by the wayside. Or, selected parts are responded to and the not the rest. Now I seriously doubt that it is intentional and may just simply have something to do with age or possibly a gray matter infection. But whatever it is it just really annoys the hell out of me! I mean if a person contacts you via email with the need to have answers to something or to set a date for an appointment with you then you should respond in kind and in a timely manner. This is especially true when a person contacts you for your assistance on something and asks what day in the coming week you would be available. You respond saying that you are available between 8 AM and 5 PM on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and tell the requester to pick which ever day and time suits them best. You then receive an email that states, "That's great, thanks, I'll see you at 10 AM sharp on Friday! WTF? Or you send an email needing a request for something happening in two weeks and during the two week period you get two other emails from the person that you were doing the inquiry to and nothing is ever said about your request? Say what? And my last example is the multiple inquiry email and the response comes in answering the first, second and last item and the others are not responded to. Come on folks, work with me here would you pretty please!!!!!!
Here's the way I see it, all of us are important and time will always be precious. But in the realm of emails everyone's time is equal. When someone takes the time to compose an email, especially one in which information is needed, then you should take the time to read it thoroughly and respond! Once an email is opened you are committed imho!
I don't know about you but as you can tell from my post, I'm gonna' get pissy when you dis' my email! Trust me when I say that I realize that the subject matter may not be as important to you as it is to me but we must respect each others time for whatever effort we are putting forth.
So please try better to read and respond to emails with a bit more thoroughness please. I'll appreciate it and I'm willing to bet others will too! Oh and always keep in mind how fortunate we are to be doing this minus the pen, the paper, the envelope, the stamp, the licking and the mailing.
6 comments:
You're right on, and our generation doesn't even have the excuse of having been raised on sound bites. Perhaps you need to make it more clear with ➧; 1,2,3; or
✔.
Or give them a test. Somewhere near the middle of the last paragraph, try "Gosh, your wife has been spending a lot of time with the man across the street from us..." or "Too bad about that dent I noticed on your back fender."
So, it doesn't count when I mark an email 'unread' so I'll get to it later? You don't see that?
I think you are setting yourself up here Tom, some of us are incorrigible. I'm going to try though, are there poker emails out there that I haven't responded to?
Thanks Marianne, I hadn't thought of that possibility of checking to see how far they get! LOL! I like it!
LOL! Jonna, there are no poker emails out there that you are remiss in answering.....this time! :-) And yes, I can see getting back to it later, that makes sense to me.....well, depending on you def of later! LOL!
Here's what you need to do ... Put all the important items in the beginning so they don't get lost (or not responded to by the reader) down further.
If there's a point or question buried in an email, I'm gonna miss it. I don't know if it's ADD or ADHD or some other type of attention deficit disorder.
Bullet points are also nice when you're wanting to highlight a point.
Kevin
Miss Anal Pants, here. I do answer all questions. I even go so far as to comment on each thought that's been written whether a question was included, or not.
That is one of my pet peeves with work emails also. I prefer picking up the phone and calling the person because I know that only half of my questions will be answered if I email (if that), and that way what I said can't be forwarded everywhere.
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