It’s a national epidemic

??Are you a victim of the national I-don’t-return-phone-calls-or-emails epidemic?  If you’re uncertain, here are the symptoms:

1.    You get a voice or email from someone you don’t know. You press delete before listening to/reading the whole message.

2.    You get a second voice or email from the same person who called you the first time. You press the delete button again.

3.    You get a third voice or email from the same person who called you two times before. You press the delete button again.

4.    You get a forth voice or email from the same person who called you three times before.

5.    You don’t have a shred of guilt about pressing the delete button, and you don’t care what the person who was calling wanted to tell you anyway. You are too busy, important and irritated because you don’t have time to keep pressing delete buttons.

6.    You are doing miraculous things to help your company and no one could possibly sell or tell you about something you need.

7.    You get a voice or email from someone you don’t know. You don’t read or listen to a word because you are busier than the person in #5 and don’t have time to even listen to or read partial messages.

8.    Your assistant tells you someone is on the phone whose name is unfamiliar so you instruct her to say you are in a meeting/out sick/on the phone/dead.

If you have any of these symptoms, remember the next time YOU want to reach someone and they don’t respond, that they’ve probably been hit by the bug as well.

I am sick and tired of people who don’t return calls. I know we’re all on overload these days, but that’s no excuse. It’s classy to respond. We’ve all got jobs to do and can help each other do them better.

It’s getting worse than the swine flu.  Hmm, maybe that’s a good name for this one, too.


0 Responses to “It’s a national epidemic”

  1. Geri says:

    touche, toby, touche

    REPLY
  2. Toby Wollin says:

    It’s not as if I’m saying that the reason why the economy is in the dumps is because people are not returning phone calls and emails, but no one sells anything until some sort of communication takes place. Have we become so dependent on the electronic media for all exchanges that having actual meaningful conversations has become something that people feel they can just dispense with? Another thing: Have we become so isolated that we believe that we don’t need other people anymore, that we are all in control , the “Don’t call me; I’ll call you if I want to talk to you”? Because if that’s the basis of this, there are going to be a whole lot of people who will find it extremely hard to sell anything, extremely hard to get job interviews, extremely hard to move forward in any sort of meaningful way.
    Oh, I forgot — that’s exactly the situation we are in right now.

    REPLY

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