A Note to Folks Who Don't Respond

We’re all busy. I get it. There are constant demands for our attention, and in the age of technology and rapid communication, those demands are ever-persistent and ever-increasing. The emails pile up, the text messages mount, the junk mail keeps coming, the voicemails ring in, the Facebook invitations beckon, and the face-to-face requests can’t be ignored. It is frustrating to be inundated with such constant communication, especially if you are an introvert like me, and it sometimes feels like privacy is a commodity as precious as gold itself.

But the bottom line remains that ignoring people—especially those whom you care about and those to whom you are accountable—is, always has been, and always will be disrespectful. I’m not going to launch into some diatribe about etiquette. I may come from a Catholic, Midwestern-reared family that values “nice,” but I’m no bourgeois debutante trying to preserve a stale and superficial version of class. To me, responding to people is about acknowledgment, gratitude, and respect. That is the foundation of my position.

I’m not going to lie, I have a bit of a history with feeling ignored. I grew up a middle child, and while many stereotypes about my birth order are downright unfair, being the one who garners less attention is pretty true. I have also always been an introvert, and a shy one at that, so standing out in social situations has never been my strong suit. As a shy introvert, you often dread being the center of attention but resent not receiving the acknowledgment you often deserve. Insert a dozen other significant life experiences, and voila, I probably have some kind of deep-seated complex about being ignored that Freudian psychotherapists would feast upon.

Be that as it may, I feel I am not alone in noticing that responding to communication—especially that of the non-face-to-face variety—seems to be considered optional these days. Coworkers routinely dismiss or delete important emails and fail to respond even after multiple follow-ups. Employers rarely ever do applicants the courtesy of a “Dear Jane” letter if the latter aren’t selected for an interview. Friends would rather avoid acknowledgement of social invitations than commit to so much as a “maybe.” Customer service representatives delete voicemails if they don’t want to investigate the answer.  Birthday wishes, cards, and gifts go unthanked because they were expected and/or forgotten. The list goes on.

I think we’ve all been on both sides of these experiences at one point or another. Sometimes it’s an honest mistake. We had 57 new emails in our inbox that day, intended to respond, but got distracted by the other 56 and just totally forgot. We were on the hiring committee, saw hundreds of applications come through, and decided to focus our time and effort on selecting candidates. We appreciated our friend’s invitation to hang out but didn’t really feel like it and had no other excuse to offer up, so we felt ignoring the request was gentler than saying no or lying. We were that customer service representative who had just had the week from hell, and one more complicated issue from a demanding and perhaps rude client would bring us to untimely self-destruction. We got inundated with birthday wishes because we’re so darn loved and lost track of who we needed to thank. All these things happen sometimes. But that doesn’t mean they should become our auto-responses.

Think of how you have felt when on the receiving end of utter dead air. What are some emotions or reactions that come to mind? Frustrated? Unimportant? Dismissed? Undervalued? Unresolved? Unappreciated? Confused? The brief quarter I spent in my basic counseling skills class would tell me that all those feelings boil down to raw anger, anxiety, and sadness. Yeah, that’s right, I’m bringing in the heavy stuff! When we fail to respond to one another, regardless of our intentions, we send the message that those who are trying to communicate with us are not important or valuable enough. We send the message that even a 2-minute follow-up is more than we are willing to give. We send messages that cause others anger, anxiety, and sadness. If it is truly the case that we don’t value them, then so be it. But I think more often than not, we do value those people, we do think they are important. However, our actions do not match our intentions.

So, I’m just going to put this out there to any and all who are reading this and who see me as valuable and important in their lives. If I am communicating with you in any medium, give me a response. It doesn’t have to be immediate. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be agreeable. It can be honest, no insincere pleasantries needed, as long as you’re not a jerk about it. But please just give me a response. And if you forget to respond or have more pressing matters at hand, I will understand and will forgive you. But if it becomes a pattern (and trust me, this middle kid notices!), I will question your respect for me and the quality of our relationship. I don’t think I can be more raw than this. I just want your response, a.k.a. your respect.

Some people may think my expectation of a response is coming from a place of entitlement. And to that I would say, it is. I believe we are all entitled to be acknowledged by one another, especially by those whom we care about and those who are accountable to us. We are all also entitled to privacy and are allowed to respond in ways that we see fit. And ok, if I am totally harassing you beyond reason, you have my permission to ignore me. (But I won’t do that, so…nonissue.) I just firmly believe that we can do better. We can do better for ourselves, we can do better for others, and we don’t have to settle for a culture of disengagement. 

As Ellen Degeneres would say, “Be kind to one another.”