HELLO JI!
I’VE GOT MAIL!
Is it rude not to respond promptly to an email? Image credit: MANISH JADHAV on Unsplash.
Once upon a time, I used to take a day off from work every month, but not leave my desk. The designated catch-up day was devoted to writing to family, old school friends and colleagues who became friends, scattered across the globe. My husband used to joke that he dreaded every move we’ve made over the years. Because each move added to the list of people I wrote to.
By hand. In my not-so-legible cursive. I blamed being left-handed for my scrawl and pointed to my mother, an inveterate letter writer, as the source of my habit.
Friends would grumble that before they could heave a sigh of relief at having finally responded to my last letter, wham! my next was sitting in their mailbox.
With email came the ease of being able to cut-and-paste from one basic letter – my news, after all, remained the same – and just customize the beginning and end.
And with this, my infamy surrounding super prompt responses grew.
I receive an email, I respond. If I can’t right away, I apologize.
And so, whenever friends gather over a Zoom call, one or the other will mention, without fail, that she heard from me and hasn’t managed to write back. Others will nod in agreement with (mostly) fond smiles.
A friend in Malaysia responds to my email of April in May, and heads me off at the pass saying she won’t be able to respond to my response until June!
All of this back and forth takes time and effort and I am known to grumble that I have way too many emails to write, and yet, write them I do.
What drives this compulsion? What does it say about me that I have to SIT on my hands to not shoot off a reply right away?
There is rising awareness that with more and more people working from home, emails sent after work hours can constitute harassment. I don’t send work emails after hours, but I seem to forget that it’s okay if I don’t respond at 10 pm.
I read that conveying constant availability can be tiring and nod in agreement. And that, as they say in corporatespeak, it’s okay to be async. But it’s rude not to respond promptly, insists a tiny voice inside my head, while I try to prioritize, based on the urgency of the task.
So what is an acceptable time lag? My phone prompts me to follow up on a Sunday on an email I sent on Thursday. I make a note to do so on Monday and give myself a pat on the back.
A dear aunt and I maintain a different pattern. We write to each other once a month, every month, and have done so for decades. But we don’t write letters, she says with a laugh, we write novellas!
Meanwhile, my friends and I continue to communicate at the pace we’ve arrived at that’s comfortable for us – the ratio of how many sent to how many received never counted.
Happy New Year!
Shagorika Easwar