Re: [NTLK] OT: Your prompt reply is appreciated (nay, compulsory)

On Oct 9, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Dennis B. Swaney wrote:
>
> Well, I was brought up to return calls promptly so I try to do so
> within
> 24 hours, and tend to treat emails the same. However, my sister and
> brother vary seldom return calls/emails promptly. I'm the oldest and
> they are in their 50's and 40's, so I don't know what to make of that.
> (I tend to say that our parents mellowed out more with each of them
> than
> with the previous child.)
>
> But generally society has come to expect "instant gratification", IMO.
>
> --
> Sincerely,
> Dennis B. Swaney

I agree with Dennis, especially with the "social networking" sites,
twitter, IM's, text messages, and omnipresence of cell phones (which
people can't even put down to drive!) the instant gratification bug is
ridiculous. Today even a reasonable callback delay of 24hrs is to long
to wait for most people, they figure you got the message NOW and you
should answer NOW with no regard for what your doing or if you want to
think on the question they've asked for awhile. For example if the
answering machine picks up my land line my aunt will immediately hang
up, then call back and if she gets the machine a second time she
starts calling my cell phone and goes through the same two call
process with my voicemail... after she finally leaves a voicemail I
might even get a text message too, and thats all for normal non-
emergency calls! It's ridiculous! I have friends/family that sometimes
use the same "bug until answered" tactic regularly with texts messages
with no regard for the fact that I may be busy working/driving/
sleeping/eating/etc. I think learning to managing the information
overload and constant interruptions that technology cause are probably
two of the three most valuable skills we can learn/teach these days,
the third is relearning the meaning of patience while managing our
impulses for instant gratification. (if you've ever installed os/2
warp or system 7.5 w/ updates from 1.44mb floppies you know all about
patience :-)

-Joe

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Received on Sat Oct 10 08:19:34 2009