Please respond

Why is it that in this modern day and age with portable electric telephones and letters being delivered through the cloud that we no longer bother to respond to messages when we receive them. We use so many tools to correspond I think we actually have forgotten how to communicate. If you are in a face-to-face conversation, or even communicating over the electric telephone you generally acknowledge someone’s statement or comment. It might just be with a smile or nod (not so effective when not face to face) or just saying ‘Roger that’.

When I was growing up it was a pain in the ass to respond to a communiqué. You had to find the right kind of rock to make a tablet out of and the chiseling was a bitch, no way to erase a typo. Spell check was something witches did. As I got older we were able to use papyrus but still the postal system left a bit to be desired. Pheidippides Postal Services were just too damn slow, and anything further than 26.2 miles wouldn’t even get delivered. It was a great day indeed when carrier pigeons started carrying messages as you could catch up with your buddies and also get a half decent meal. Until Sam Morse decided that he could convert smoke signals to an English based language no one ever even communicated with people that lived more than 3 miles away, unless they lived up a mountain.

Skipping a few years of telexing, faxing, paging, voice messages left on a cassette tape (kids, look up cassette tape) has now bought us to the era of not fucking responding half the time to texts, voice messages and emails because, well, I have no idea why. We need to stop taking the technology for granted, just because you send someone a message does not mean they read it or received it, so a simple acknowledgement would be nice thing to do (although not when driving a car). You don’t have to respond that second, sometimes it is better to take your time, but responding at some point that day isn’t exactly going to ruin your binge watching of Short Poppies on Netflix.

As Poets Day is all about making your life easier I have created a list of suitable replies to text messages and emails:

• K

• Ok

• Thanks

• No worries mate

• Yes

• Yes I got your message

• Yes I got the other 10 messages you sent me

• No

• No way

• No fucking way in hell you pig ignorant bastard

• Put down that sheep

• I’m calling the police

These are all responses that I have received in the past and the great thing is that you know exactly where you stand and that the person at the other end has seen the message/image that you sent. What is so damn hard about that, are peoples lives so busy these days that common courtesy has been thrown out the window? 

As for voicemail, now an outdated technology, well who uses voicemail these days anyway? With my accent no one can understand my messages so I always need to follow up with an email or text (that usually gets no fucking response). I think the weirdest thing you can hear when you call someone these days is ‘Sorry, the voice mail box of the person you are calling is full’. WTF are they doing, keeping messages from 2005 on their damn phone. No one leaves voice messages any more so how can your sodding voice mail box be full – dick, guess I will just have to send you a text.

K  J

And delete the old messages you muppet.

As always the views in this blog are mine and just because you might not respond to my messages (you know who you are) this is not about you J

Work hard, play hard and earn your inspiration.

Happy Poets Day