Comments on: When Can I Expect an Email Response?

By: Neal

Neal — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:40:35 +0000

People in corporations use e-mail in a political, power-playing, manner. E-mail non-response is used as a power-tool to withhold needed information from someone you want to frustrate and thwart. I have watched a colleague ( accidentally while visiting him in his office, he continued to work on his emails, with the screen visible to me) pick through emails from superiors and immediately respond and ignore all others.

I have worked with corporate officers, who have to respond with only one word, “approve”, or ” do not approve” on some issue that needed to pass a corporate “gate”, and they would sit on it for weeks, knowing full well, that it is near torture for the person needing the approval (say a programmer who requested permission to download a free, open-source tool). It is sad when the open-source tool can be downloaded, usable, and free, but corporate policy requires an IT officer to approve the download. This is just an example of using e-mail as a tool in office power politics, I don’t want to get into a debate over the security policies and whether programmers should be allowed to download open-source tools or not. That is a totally different topic.

E-mail, particularly CC and BCC, are powerful political tools – as used by many ineffective people.

By: James

James — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:11:02 +0000

Emails? What happened to the good old postal letters? I know that emailing online is efficient and all but writing letters sort of brought light in the mail. You could tell if someone was happy when they wrote the letter because their handwriting would jump up and done. You could tell if someone was sad because there would be tears imprinted on the letter. Emails I believe can’t express emotions as would a written letter could. But in some cases its not all about emotions. It could be useful for urgent dispatches or advertising I guess.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:19:14 +0000

@Sam: I think you should avoid jumping to conclusions on the basis of one unresponded email. Sometimes, it could be that he was transitioning to a different email address. Besides, I think this is more a reflection of you than it is of your ex-coworker. Why would you want to adopt this extra burden of “caring” for someone when you don’t really enjoy it? Chances are if you don’t really enjoy conversing with the person in question, he probably feels likewise about you. It is unfair for you to expect that kind of effort from others just because you have some kind of personal standard to uphold. Not everyone feels up to being nice and friendly just because you are. But if this is what you must do then do it, but just don’t get all judgmental when people don’t respond the way you expect them to.

By: Image Consultant

Image Consultant — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:07:09 +0000

Thanks for sharing this info! It was really interesting. I will surely come back again here.

By: George

George — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:08:04 +0000

I agree with Marty, and would like to add that if you don’t respond to an email, the other person has no way of knowing whether or not you actually received it.

By: Pab

Pab — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:21:32 +0000

Thanks for all your contributions. Does anyone know if there has been some similar studies done on IM?

By: Geoff Dodd

Geoff Dodd — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:38:23 +0000

Interesting that the study was done in 2003 because I find myself doing exactly the same things in 2007. Geoff.

By: meadows

meadows — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:13:15 +0000

Thanks for all of your email opinions. I am teaching a class to Correctional Officers on how to use better communication skills via email. This is good stuff.

By: Little Bunny Foo Foo

Little Bunny Foo Foo — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 04:36:08 +0000

Different strokes for different folks. Some people are better at getting and giving information when it is audible. Others are better with visual.

In addition, there are text processing tools (perl, awk, sed, grep, even NOTEPAD) that make it easier for me to process text data than for me to process audio.

But, that’s me. Others may find it entirely the opposite. Having Dyslexia or APD (Audio Perception Disorder), for example, would skew which means of communication one would prefer to engage in and respond to. IOW, someone might not respond to an e-mail because it is hard for them to process written information.

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:09:08 +0000

I’ve learned that some people are just plain incompetent when it comes to reading e-mails. They either overlook them, don’t read them thoroughly enough, forget to respond, or something are just too *lazy* to respond. I used to think I was intentionally being ignored, but eventually I recognized that sometimes it’s just general incompetence. Needless to say, I avoid sending e-mails to such people, at least if I’m looking for a response.

In general, though, I agree that not responding to personal e-mails (as opposed to mass or commercial e-mails) is extremely rude and unprofessional. For instance, one of my co-workers recently left our company. I sent him an e-mail shortly afterward to see how he was doing, and he responded. A couple of months later, I sent him another one to see how he was coming out at his new job (just to be a caring former co-worker, not because I really enjoy his conversation or anything). Anyway, he never responded. Needless to say, I will never be sending him another e-mail, and my opinion of him has changed dramatically for the worse. But I do realize that it wasn’t personal–it just shows what he is really like.