327 Enquiries Outstanding

I’ve been putting together my Happystance promotion plan for the week and realised with a distinctly unpleasant bump that I now have 327 lines of enquiry that are waiting for someone to get back to me. Some of these date back to more than a year ago, and are relegated to the occasional scheduled tickle to see if I can raise a response.

Others involve situations where I contacted the designated person, only to be sucked into organisational black holes where “That person left. X is now officially Acting Vice-Lord High Everything but she is on maternity leave. And while she is gone, Y is taking on some of her duties. But I’m not sure who now has responsibility for the bit that would involve you”.

Each of these lines of enquiry involves a minimum of two emails and phone calls. Some of them have a history of more than fifty separate communications.

One of these ‘contacts’ has a history that stretches back to April 2004. Every time that I manage to contact a person, the response is always, “We are interested. We must arrange a meeting” but then time passes and there is no response to emails, letters or phone calls. In all that time, I have once received a letter that said, “There is no excuse for our failure to reply to your messages” and then went on to give excuses, including the one that the people who use it must think is scarcer than rubies “I’m very busy”.

I find this lack of responsiveness and even courtesy to be understandable when you are dealing with an under-resourced group that is relying completely on volunteer effort. Although, even then, I wonder what sort of service they are delivering to their clients and users. But I find this difficulty in communicating with paid officials whose job it is to deal with enquiries from people like me to be beyond lamentable.

Some officials are overwhelmed and can not schedule in the time to let me know that there is not, nor ever will be, time to deal with my enquiry. Although, I feel that having a default email or letter to send to this effect might ease the burden, here. At least I would know that there is no point in attempting to make contact or hoping that I will accidentally come across a human rather than a voice mail or email inbox at some point.

I wonder if some people justify their jobs by pointing to the number of enquiries they receive to which they can not reply? Or if so many workers are trapped in low levels of job satisfaction that it has profound impact not only on their health, but on their willingness to respond to an enquiry where there are no consequences for refusing to engage.

I do know that I need to grow a thicker skin. Or, given that these people never seem to be in the office and must be out somewhere, perhaps I should hone my baking skills and put together a launch party. A lunch invitation might succeed where countless emails have failed...

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project