Is email confusing or something?

So, last week I was finishing up some paperwork for something important by asking all kinds of questions of people that were supposed to be able to answer them. I received a response for an important question in a reply that ignored other questions and had no identifying information anywhere, like a signature. I could identify the person from the email address but that was it. The person who had to then take action in response to that reply did by sending another email to the first person, to which there was no reply. A week later I received another email from the original responder stating that my paperwork was missing the response that the action taker had sent to the person seeking it. Again, the sender sent the email with no identifying information whatsoever. I replied by re-sending the response by the action taker and asked if there was anything else and requested a reply stating whether or not my paperwork was complete. It has been several days and I have received noting.

This kind of occurrence is much more common that I care for. For whatever reason there has always been some type of taboo surrounding email in professional interactions for certain people. I was in high school in the mid-nineties and then college in the late-nineties, graduating in 2001 so email has almost always been a part of my life. When I started to work full-time email was my basic method of communicating with co-workers and contacts when I needed to discuss anything. In professional engagements I prefer email to phone conversations or impromptu meetings because there is a written record and I assume is actually the product of some kind of real, actual thought, more so at least than an off the cuff statement.

For others email seems to be this great barrier to effective communication. I have worked with many people who prefer direct conversations over the phone or in person to email and are even somewhat hostile to the use of email. Do these people imagine that everything they discuss is akin to a state secret and can’t be written down? What’s the problem with having an actual written record of what was said so that the same discussion can be avoided over and over again? Others can’t seem to answer more than one item in an email reply, never get back to other questions and never identify themselves in one. I often wonder if these people can only read forty words or so at a time and can’t bother with more and why it’s such a bother to at least include a name at the end of a message, is it really so difficult to type a dozen or so more letters? Or to use an automatic signature that can be applied to every email after setting it up just once? Those who take a very long time to reply or don’t at all are the worst. Are they so important that my inquiry is inconsequential to their world? Why should I have to re-send emails or manage my messages to include actual deadlines just to receive a timely response or even any response?

Email has been around for a long time and has been common in the workplace in most desk jobs for at least a decade. It can be an incredibly useful tool; unfortunately too many obstinate people refuse its practical use preferring instead to use company resources to spam me with none-too-funny jokes passed from others. I actually was scolded recently, yes scolded, by a coworker who stated that they couldn’t possibly remember everything that had been said in previous meetings, of which notes were taken and sent via email and could be referenced from. So I’m the jerk because I remember and don’t want to have the same discussion multiple times. Give me a break; get with the times you people who can’t or won’t use email effectively. It’s not my fault that you suck.