These days my biggest pet peeve is when someone doesn’t respond to a question in an email or text I send them. They write back, but without answering the question. Are they not answering because they don’t want to? Did they forget to answer? Should I ask again? Am I being obnoxious by asking again? Are they being passive aggressive, making a point by not answering? Am I being passive aggressive by not asking again, in essence saying never mind, forget it, I really don’t care?
My husband says this sounds just like me. I can't imagine what he means.
(My husband says this is me in a nutshell. I wonder what he means.)
100 words/RetroFlash
Barbara BucklesArtist, writer, storyteller, spy. Okay, not a spy…I was just going for the rhythm.
I call myself “an inveterate dabbler.” (And my husband calls me “an invertebrate babbler.”) I just love to create one way or another. My latest passion is telling true stories live, on stage. Because it scares the hell out of me.
As a memoirist, I focus on the undercurrents. Drawing from memory, diaries, notes, letters and photographs, I never ever lie, but I do claim creative license when fleshing out actual events in order to enhance the literary quality, i.e., what I might have been wearing, what might have been on the table, what season it might have been. By virtue of its genre, memoir also adds a patina of introspection and insight that most probably did not exist in real time.
Characterizations:
been there, funny
I understand entirely. It happens all time. I think we have short attention spans these days and by the time we are finished reading, forget what the question was. I know I mean no harm when I forget to answer. Sometimes, I’ll go back and respond later. Sometimes, I need a reminder. I never deliberately dodge a question. But I concur Barb, I think your peeve is universal.
You capture the multi-level thinking of the situation perfectly. I think the closer the relationship you have with someone (especially family), the easier it is to over-think. Been there.
Who, me over-think? You think? LOL!
I totally get this, Barb. If I text my youngest daughter (her preferred form of communication) and ask more than one question in the text, she only answers the first one if I’m lucky. I have learned to text only one question or statement at a time. Really annoying.
I totally agree, Barb. I always read emails carefully and make sure I have responded to everything in them, but I find that most other people do not. I think it comes from doing all their communications on their phones instead of a larger screen. Or just from being careless. Or short attention span.
I find that if I have questions I want answered, I need to ask them in a bullet list to have any hope of getting all or even most of them answered. Pulling them out of a paragraph structure seems beyond a lot of people!
Just send the f#####g email again and don’t bother your pretty little head about it Bebe!
Barbara, they’re just trying to drive you nuts. Occam’s Razor. But I find it quite common that my questions in e-mails remain unanswered, but sometimes I get the last laugh. Not long ago, pre-pandemic, I responded to a friend’s e-mail and added a simple question: I am going to Boston next weekend to see the Red Sox, would you like to join me. No response. After the weekend I mentioned the great time I had there, and he responded, “oh I wish you had told me you were going.” Since my earlier message was in my Send folder I was able to forward it to him with the cover message, “I did.”
[Head slap] Just trying to drive me nuts…why didn’t I think of that!? I might just try for the last laugh with one particular friend.
Yup, it’s the attention span, Barb. Happens all the time to me, especially in texts. Drives me nuts.
It’s not you, Barb. This one drives me nuts, too. Good for you for highlighing it. As you can see, we are hardly alone.
And, as you’ve probably noticed, some people are more prone to this than others. With most people, I think it is mere inattention, but I suspect others are in fact passive aggressive and avoiding an answer. Whatever the cause, I find myself with the same quandry that you have: should I ask again or just try to interpret their silence and move on?
As a lawyer, I dealt with a seemingly effective but usually useless discovery device called “interrogatories” for years. So I know that there are a million different ways to not answer a question. But, in real life, I want some answers, please.
Thanks, John, especially for validating my suspicion about the passive aggressive possibility!
You should (a) number the questions so it will be more obvious if one is skipped; (b) recap at the end of your email the key questions you’re awaiting the answers to; (c) apologize in a p.s. that you’re going to take the liberty of writing again in a few days if you don’t get the answer, as it’s pressing in order for you to go on with your life.
This is me in a nutshell.
Different nuts!