So, I have noticed over the last few years that people don’t reply to emails.
Some do. Best mates do, maybe a day or two late. Also people you are working with, when both your lives depend on sorting stuff out.
The ones that don’t – well, I send reminders, and if they’re “cold calls” I usually send something along the lines of “hi, just resending by this in case it went to your junk mail or spam”
But then there’s always texts. Instant replies. Except no – not now. People don’t even bother to reply to texts.
Oh OK then I’ll call you, like we did in the old days. Except I then get that most ancient of responses – voicemail
Is this just me?
fentonsteve says
No.
H.P. Saucecraft says
“Young people of today” don’t email (*shudder*). It’s seen as dull, slow, demanding, and unattractive. Old people of today tend not to bother because they’re dull, slow, demanding, and unattractive.
hedgepig says
Apparently sections of the yoof are prone to seeing full stops as aggressive. I’ve heard it said that they make it sound like you’re being bluntly snippy in a “huh. Fine.” kind of way.
To which I can only say, come friendly planet-killing asteroid. (I don’t mind where it falls, all comes to the same thing, but Slough seems as good a place as any.)
Jackthebiscuit says
A slightly harsh summing up, but nonetheless, in my experience, sadly true.
mikethep says
Now this is a nearly five-hamper thread if ever I saw one. Or is it…
It’s when your wife doesn’t reply to your texts that you have to worry…
Jaygee says
It’s when my wife sends me a text or email that demands a reply that I start to worry…
fentonsteve says
A lockdown development is Mrs F emails me, then exists her office (the study), traverses the kitchen, and enters my office (dining room) demanding a reply. Often before I have even received it – that email has to go to a server in California and back again, she only has to open two doors.
hubert rawlinson says
Hasn’t it always been the case?
Junior Wells says
My Dad sold insurance, so he visited people all over town. So if we were driving past he’d often drop in – even with wife and 3 kids in tow. No call ahead just a spontaneous drop in.
Unheard of now.
Mrbellows says
I think it might be called, on call fatigue. We’re always expected to be available day to night. I know I suffer from this from this very blog. Expectations run high. We are cast into the milieu. We hastily make descendants.
hedgepig says
Occasionally I think I’m understanding one of your posts and then you throw in a casual “ We are cast into the milieu. We hastily make descendants” and I’m lost in admiration for whoever coded your random vocabulary generator.
H.P. Saucecraft says
“We are cast into the milieu. We hastily make descendants.”
This is Peak Bellows.
Boneshaker says
Afterword t-shirt?
Freddy Steady says
It’s the Yes isn’t it?
fitterstoke says
“Peak Bellows” – another Afterword T-shirt…
Moose the Mooche says
I would peek below, but I’m not allowed.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Not since that unfortunate incident at St. Hilda’s …
Moose the Mooche says
Stupid CCTV!
Mrbellows says
@hedgepig. Welcome to my web. Bwahaha!
Jaygee says
Re MrBellows
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/contraception/
Mrbellows says
Black Type says
My pet hate is when people are indicated as being ‘live’ on Messenger, then as soon as you send a message, they go offline…grrrr!
Black Celebration says
It’s not just you. There’s this “I’m-a-right-rebel, me” pattern of behaviour where a useless mid-manager will brag about not reading emails or listening to voicemail messages. It literally takes a minute to read and respond to an email unless it’s a long/technical one. Even then it’s easy/quick to acknowledge receipt of it and tell them you’ll get back to them.
I don’t respond to “sales” emails though, I must admit.
mikethep says
A subspecies is people who are just too. damn. BUSY doing stuff that’s above your pay grade to answer emails, even though doing so is a large part of their jobs.
davebigpicture says
I almost never leave or listen to voicemail. I’d rather send or receive a brief text. Voicemail is invariably rambling and I have to write the important bits down anyway. I usually respond quickly to texts and email as it’s considered the done thing in my so called profession.
Gatz says
An oddity of twenty first century life – It used to be a given in futuristic fiction that visual, face to face communication would be the next big advance from telephones. Now that we have it most people don’t like to use it much. In fact, young people seem reluctant even to speak on the phone and prefer terse written communication.
hedgepig says
They’re not the only ones. I hate talking on the phone only slightly less than I hate video calls, and I hate it a lot. I’m a friendly person but nothing is more likely to make me inexplicably cross than my phone actually *ringing*.
H.P. Saucecraft says
If I make (or get) one call a week that’s a busy week. Never text. Regularly email a few long-term pals. Make asinine comments here.
Jaygee says
If you shout rather than look into the abyss, presumably the abyss has the good manners to offer some kind of acknowledgement.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Do you mean abbess? Searching for abbess.
Tiggerlion says
I remember when phones were attached to wires and mail arrived through a letter box. If you left the house, you couldn’t reply to anyone.
Pink Floyd played dreamy, pastoral music back then. Those were the days.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Baked out of our minds on Malc’s mum’s front room carpet. Atom Heart. Live Dead. Watching the static on the TV.
Actually, thinking about it, not much personal development in fifty years. My first wife was right.
ip33 says
Judging by the amount of stuff I’ve delivered over the last few months mail still arrives through a letter box. In huge amounts
davebigpicture says
I know! I had 27 bundles of mail on Friday although I think the round hadn’t been done for a couple of days. I had to redistribute the load to stop the trolley from tipping backwards and I’m sure it was well over the permitted weight. Don’t get me started on pizza flyers……
ip33 says
I feel your pain Dave. I’ve done the trolley round in Pulborough the last 3 days and Thursday was bonkers. Went out at 8.50 and got back at 3.15. Friday and yesterday were better even with lapsing.
Back in the van this week but with an afternoon collection, about 3.45 to 5.15. But am still enjoying it*
*Mostly
Tiggerlion says
I bet all that ‘stuff’ was ordered via the Internet using a phone with no wires.
ip33 says
I used to order my stuff from the back of comics. I’m still waiting for those Sea Monkeys.
Hawkfall says
Still waiting for that Charles Atlas course as well, eh ip33?
*kicks sand in ip33’s face*
C’mon girls, let’s leave ip33 with his books and go to where the fun is at!
Moose the Mooche says
*puts on x-ray glasses*
No way! M & S!
Hawkfall says
*whacks Moose with Hostess Twinkie*
ip33 says
And this never arrived either.
davebigpicture says
Was it a Tracked Parcel?
Moose the Mooche says
….it certainly had his name on it
davebigpicture says
It’s a Postie in joke.
fentonsteve says
Blimey, AW in-jokes not enough for you? We’ve got postie in-jokes now.
What would Gerry Rafferty say?
davebigpicture says
Anyone seen him lately?
Lunaman says
I remember those wires on telephones which were also located down the street! Ahh the good old days. (;
Moose the Mooche says
Phone boxes is it! These days you have to wee in a toilet. The world’s gone mad.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Did Hull have those metal slopes they added to the insides of phone booths to direct the urine back at the urinator? Perhaps it was a Coventry thing. They’re fussy there.
Moose the Mooche says
The Urinator? Worst superhero ever.
Martin Hairnet says
Marvel as he deploys his UTI shield against arch nemesis Bladderstone.
H.P. Saucecraft says
https://www.redbubble.com/i/mask/The-Urinator-World-s-1-Super-Hero-by-scottjgranville/64019078.9G0D8
fentonsteve says
How do drug dealers identify their location without phone wires to hang their shoes off?
Black Celebration says
I saw footage of a trial from 40 years ago where a crowd thronged outside, waiting for the verdict. The sheer drama of reporters bursting out of the courtroom in a mad rush to get to a phone was really good telly.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Phone tech has also killed movie plotting. Before these things, you could build tension in the hunt for information, or being on the run/anonymous, or under threat, or any number of useful narrative situations. Now, we see someone tap a phone, possibly with the text artfully superimposed on the image.
Harry Tufnell says
I use messenger quite a lot and I’ve noticed lately that the thumbs up emoji has become shorthand for “enough now, stop messaging me”.
Moose the Mooche says
Pinkerton does not return my messages.
fitterstoke says
He’s married an American…he doesn’t want you any more, Moose-san…
Moose the Mooche says
It must have been the singing.
Colin H says
I’m fed up having to more or less apologise to people for the non-reply to (business-related) enquiries to the estate representative of a late artist I’d be considered an expert on. Not to acknowledge an email, even in the manner ‘Thanks, but no thanks’, is incredibly rude in my view.
fortuneight says
I’ll alsways reply to friends and family . My step kids don’t use e-mail, and tend to do everything via a WhatsApp group, but that’s fine given the it’s mostly trivial stuff. Although I do still wince at “going to” becoming “gunna”. The people who bank work e-mails are mostly just on a power trip (see also “I’m too busy to punctuate or attempt any form of coherent layout)”. If there’s one thing I’d like to see people boiled in oil for it’s the needless email copy.
At work, I get around a dozen unsolicited mails a week that make it through the spam filter and about as many again that don’t (there’s a guy very very keen to discuss my need for magnets). The sales mails that make it through all tend to end with “when would you be free to talk in the next week?”. In the past I might have replied and said “no thanks, but I’ll call you if I change my mind”, but that usually sets off a flood of “who else can I talk to” or, “I’ll get back to you in x weeks”, so now I just blank them all. Most are selling stuff I’m not responsible for, or wouldn’t touch with Bargepole’s (pay day loan companies, NI avoidance scams, and a guy from a investment company that the Sunday Times has called out week afetr week for overcharging that thinks I’ll just roll over and give him our Directors contact details so he can give them a “no obligation financial review”). I appreciate they are just doing their job, but the fact they’ve bought my contact details from some data hawker or just as likely LindedIn doesn’t obligate me to listen to sales pitches.
It’s fairly common now to get 3 or 4 follow up mails (9 is the record so far), occasionally with increasing levels of huff. One even complained to my boss, like that was going to make us choose them as a supplier. That said, it’s better than the days of screening phone calls.
Black Type says
So agree about ‘gunna’. Everyone knows it’s ‘gonna’. Bloody millennials…
Arthur Cowslip says
gna
fitterstoke says
Gnu?
Beezer says
Gnu. One of a countless number of disappointments endured in My Workplace was one day listening in to a few colleagues in a huddle round a poster pinned up next to the tea point.
They were discussing a Gnu Club. I was perplexed and thrilled. What an odd yet marvellous thing. I was in!
Anyway, they nobbed off and I got a squint at the poster they’d been looking at. A Canoe Club. Not Gnu.
Pah.
Black Celebration says
Fake gnus!
retropath2 says
The Gnu Club? Calling, Jeffrye Lee Pierec, if expecting littkle response. (He’s dead.)
Martin Hairnet says
Have an up BC. Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the English Riviera? Fake gnus.
And then there’s this:
fitterstoke says
Good grief – Flanders & Swann advertising tea – who gnu?
Smiles Diles says
Identified as Gnorman the Gnu in later adverts.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I remain agnustic.
Black Celebration says
This is along the lines of my experience too.
Unfortunately if you are polite and engage with them it’s like they smell blood and move in for the kill, even if you reply with a definite no thank you.
I get the odd initially friendly approach that escalates over time in my junk folder. “I am very disappointed that you haven’t responded – this is very bad for your professional reputation”, “this will be my last email to you” .
It’s like Stan by Eminem – but the writer has absolutely no idea who I am or what I do.
dai says
Was going to “Leave a Reply”, then I thought fuck it
Mousey says
LOL
Uncle Wheaty says
They don’t reply because you preface everything with ‘So’.
Mousey says
So that’s why
fitterstoke says
I don’t find that particular ‘tic’ applied in writing very often. However, we seem to live in a period where anyone being interviewed on TV or radio, at any level, on any subject, seems incapable of the simplest exposition without starting it with ‘So’ – usually pointless in context and adding nothing. I’m really very laid back, but this makes me want to punch them repeatedly in the head.
See also: ‘literally’…
retropath2 says
Blimey, this is heading hamperwards. Pity you didn’t include a forwarding address.