So , there I was minding my own business after my workout at the gym and sitting close by was a group of people chatting about work.
‘Get a life!’ I thought but then again some people only have work in their life but that is another topic for another day.
The group were talking about getting in touch with people and the problems they face when their e-mails are not answered or even read. Now, bear in mind that birthday cards and Christmas cards were Victorian inventions designed to send to people whom you would not see personally. E-mails are sent by people who are actually looking at each other in the same room sometimes, we have come an awfully long way in making things ridiculously complex.
Many employers in the UK are training apprentices how to engage in conversations with customers and teaching how to speak on the phone because, despite all the qualifications garnered, apparently the younger generation find talking to people a bridge too far…hmm?
I digress. Back to my vocal group in the gym lobby.
One of the number , who was obviously the alpha male of the group, declared that he ‘has never sent an e-mail that was not in bullet point format’. Wow, so much for the art of conversation then! He then went on to drop a small bombshell by proudly announcing that, when at work if an e-mail came into him that was more than 5 lines long, he would delete it without opening it!!!!!!
So either he works at a desperately dull and unimportant business or he is an arrogant fool…answers on a postcard please to the address above!
What a sorry state we are in, where we can send a letter across the world in milliseconds yet we have no idea if the recipient will even read it….and we call this progress. Perhaps we just send too much rubbish; stuff which if it were handwritten would not earn the right to a postage stamp, or maybe we are just overwhelmed with information and cannot always sort the wheat from the chaff.
Less is more, so when you speak make it worth listening to…
see you on the long and winding road…….. Patrick