Some months back we commented upon the use of text and emails rather than a direct phone call and such methods can be counter productive..This month we take the matter a stage further with some observations about lack of response to communications.

One hears the same outraged complaint everywhere these days — on television, radio, in newspaper articles and endlessly among friends: ‘They never got back to me!’  Telephone calls, emails, letters and texts are endlessly ignored, causing nationwide frustration.

It seems we live in an age of No Response, which blights hope and causes all but the most determined to give up. it can frustratingly difficult to get a reply to our messages

It’s as though a prompt response reveals that you’re not busy or important enough.
It’s when applying for a new job that the cruelty of silence really strikes people

In these times of grave hardship and rising unemployment, it’s vital for people looking for work to get an answer.  And yet it rarely ever happens. I heard an employer say on the radio the other day, ‘the applicant must realise there’s nothing available. It’s not worth the trouble of sending out hundreds of letters of apology.’

A friend who has a busy recruitment agency commented :- “I understand both sides of this. I hate not getting a reply but, as an example, I recently left my ofiice for 1 hour and returned to 73 telephone messages from differnt people and 300 odd emails. If every email took just 1 min and every telephone call 5 mins I would have been been there over 11 hours just dealing with that, not amind anything else I am expected to do.

You ring a plumber, a window cleaner or an odd job man, saying you need him urgently and could he call you back. But he doesn’t. You ring many times. You despair. If they finally do get in touch, they’re apologetic, but they put it down to — yes, you’ve guessed — being too busy.

I simply cannot believe that anyone is too bogged down to make a brief telephone call.

This nationwide casualness extends to social invitations, too. Once, it was the norm to reply straight away, realising that the host of the event needed to know about numbers. But these days, as answering  private invitations seems not to be a priority, a host often has to chase up friends to find out if they’re coming.
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Luckily, some bastions of good manners do remain — and their courtesy is appreciated all the more for its rarity.

One who springs to mind is a famous writer and television chef — the other day my daughter wrote asking if he would supply a recipe for the charity she has started, and he emailed back within moments, despite his busy schedule.
So, you see, it can be done.

I wonder how Molaris Dental Personnel rates on this topic.  We do try to reply to all communication but only this week I was taken to task for not replying when I promised to do so.  Oooops