For example I’ll send an e-mail with 3 questions and will only get an answer to one of the questions. It’s worse when there are 2 yes/no questions with a question that is obviously not a yes/no question. Then I get a response of
Yes
back in the e-mail. So which question are they answering?
Mainly I’m asking all of you why do people insist on only answering 1 question out of an e-mail where there are multiple? Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?
Edit at this point I’ve got the answers . Some are too lazy to actually read. Some admit they get focused on one item and forget to go back. I understand the second group. The first group yeah no excuse there.
Continuing edit: there are comments where people have tried the bullet points and they say it still doesn’t help. I might put the needed questions in red.
Bad reading comprehension
Yes.
Take your upvote and choke on it, prick.
/s
I didn’t expect !inclusiveor@lemmy.blahaj.zone followed by !angryupvote@sh.itjust.works
Bet you didn’t expect this either
No one expects it… But what a show! Damn, the song will be stuck in my head for days now
🎶Sit on my face and tell me that you love me🎶
Learn to ask better questions. Understand that you may only get one answer and ask the best most important question in a clear and concise way.
May I ask, regarding your typing are your questions buried in text?
If the questions are buried in text similar to your last paragraph, your not getting all those questions answered.
As far as I can tell their last paragraph is three clear and distinct questions.
Did all the questions get answered in this post?
Edit: Yes, found it!
Yes they are that lazy. The average office worker also has the attention span of a gnat. Write shorter emails with fewer questions if you can.
Yep that’s fine push to production by Friday plz.
The human brain processes information by chunking - bundling up information into chunks to remember it. It’s like a .zip file or compression on an image. That process is a bit lossy. If you’ve ever tried to write a technical document or a rules-set for a game, and had a user go through the document undirected, you’ll see it in action.
The more complicated, technical, or tedious the instructions are, the more likely loss or misinterpretation will occur. A friend of mine says that writing a technical document is like programming a computer that skips every 7th line.
As a person who has written many of these, I’ve found ways to counteract / ameliorate their problems:
- the use of paragraphing important points that you want feedback on
- When sending to multiple people, but wanting feedback from a specific person, I bold, underline, and color their name next to their action item, so they know it’s for them
- Using checklists or bullet points
- explaining things through multiple avenues, like with visual images and with text simultaneously
I hope this helps!
I’ve also found it helps to, if you have just a few questions that aren’t really related, break them into separate messages. And space them out a bit, if you’ve got time.
Hopefully you use astricks to bold because if you’re using HTML then lots of people won’t see all of those text decorations
Why are you sending an email with multiple questions? If you have more than one question, it merits a phone call. Nobody has the time to answer all of your questions via email all day every day.
I personally receive over 200 business emails a day. Can you imagine what it would be like to answer multiple questions from each one?
If you have more than 1 question, call. Don’t wanna call? Then it’s not that important.
You answer multiple questions from 200 phone calls every day?
Why would you even waste your time to reply if you’re not going to read what you’re replying to?
Some people dont use phones for security reasons, and its also good to have things in writing.
This is an absolutely insane take. The documentation that emails provide cover everyone’s ass.
Maybe that works for internal and business communications, but if it is communication externally with clients there are a lot of people that just don’t answer their phone. Sometimes it is important stuff, and sometimes there are followup questions.
“XYZ is no longer available. Would you like ABC instead?
How many of ABC would you like?”So when I’m writing to tech support (and they DO NOT offer phone support) exactly how do you suggest i call them?
I put in the two or three questions to save time. They can learn to read or get out of the business. There is a reason I put the questions in one email so they can read all three and get the answers back to each of the questions. If the three questions are related to each other show me the problem. This is especially important if the three questions are either related to each other, or contingent on each other.
My colleagues complain of the same things, saying they’ve tried everything. But I never have that issue.
Here’s an example of what they might send: Hello Bob, we have just recieved all your documents, so thank you. But upon review, we have found that we are still missing x,y,z. In order to expedite the process we ask for your cooperation.
- At your earliest convenience, can you please send not more than twelve months of documents x and how they pertain to y?
- Can you clarify why z contains a substantial difference from the previous times it occurred in September 2020, October 2020? Don’t hesitate to contact us with any further questions!
Here’s what I would say instead: Hi Bob, to finish the file we require:
- A max 12 months of documents x (showing y)
- Why is z now so different from 2020 Sept, Oct? Thanks in advance.
This is the correct answer. If people aren’t answering all your questions, your not formatting your questions properly.
I do a mix of both.
Start short and get to the point.
Add any extra crap below it.
Hey Bob we need X/Y/Z to finish the thing. Can you send it ASAP so we can continue.
Additional details:
- X is needed because of blah blah blah. Confirming the measurement and parts needed.
- Y is needed for compliance reporting in sister department in case of an audit.
- Z is requested by the project manager to justify additional man hours and assign more staff so we can meet the deadline.
I know of 5 people I work with who will moat likely send you 10 months of documents x (showing y) as a response to your example, 12 if you are lucky.
No, they will not even acknowledge #2. They would have the same reaponse to your first, wordier version because they are just doing the first request and barely noticed you had a two digit number.
That’s the point where you start with the “Thank you! In case you missed it…”
Almost never fails to get an apology and a smug feeling of superiority. God, I hate those people. Luckily I don’t have to work with those brainless corpo drones too much.
LOL, literally happened to me this morning, except my tormentor said “nope.”
I’ll harass him about it next week
I skip questions I don’t want to answer.
In the US it’s probably because literacy and reading comprehension is the lowest it’s been since the 80s.
Hi based on you current post,
Why do people insist on answering only one question?
**Do people just not read? ** I would say most people have a lot to read, especially emails, I get dozens of them daily, archive a few thousands yearly. So I will gloss over, see if it’s addressed to me, of not I will probably wait until it becomes my problem to react/reply
Are people thatLazy? No people are busy, is this the same question as the first, out a request for alternatives causes to not reading?
What is going on? This question is vague, I see no point in replying, except maybe an opportunity to troll, or belittle you in this email that had now accumulated 30 people over 7 departments, and possibly one or two customer that were involved a week ago when the thread was about something entirely different.
In short, be specific, and format your message for readability. ;
Name whoever you expect to reply. Split your questions.
Make sure they’re actual questions you need definitive answers to.So I will gloss over, see if it’s addressed to me, of not I will probably wait until it becomes my problem to react/reply
Tbh I would rather have someone do this not realizing I’m expecting a reply from them than to reply only to some of it, because when the latter happens it’s usually like pulling teeth to get a response to the rest.
Gonna be honest, always write my mails structured with listed out questions that try to be specific yet not overloaded with info (hard to do, but possible. Mostly) and yet…
I get two answers to my three questions, with one answer even on topic, and the other being astrology divination of polar bear’s butthole position over png of africa.
Yeah I get that too.
Should the report be sent by mail or e-mail?- frozen yogurt
You can mitigate most of it by having extremely clear emails that are fast to read, with clearly numbered questions.
Eh, still about 50-50 with these people. I’ve sent an email with 4 nicely formatted and numbered questions and had them respond only to question 3. Like… You read some of it, decided to answer one, and then give up with no other acknowledgement? Shit is wild.
“Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?”
Not much, what is going on with you?
I recently emailed my professor about a question on a take home test. I asked for clarification because the wording was weird. I also asked how I should format the answer, and where in the textbook I can find info relating to it. His email back to me just said “the answer is on page 75”. It was not.
That’s what you get for not buying the very latest edition of the textbook. /s
Seriously though, you’re clearly trying to actually comprehend the material, but even the professor was too checked out? I wish I were surprised, but that’s just upsetting. Nobody takes responsibility for education anymore, not the instructors, not the administration, and none but maybe a handful of students who get zero support from either of the above. I’ve learned more from reading on the internet for free than I have from any classroom. But learning for free on one’s own doesn’t give someone a fancy paper that attracts employers. Gotta spend money to make money, yet again.
