My pet peeve: people who don't return calls/emails! (ranty)

I work at a college, where I coordinate a grant that provides professional development for teachers. Most of my time (when I'm not on DU!) I am either calling or emailing teachers, professors, college employees, vendors, etc. Nine times out of ten I have to leave messages -- which eight times out of ten are never returned. Which means I have to put everything on hold, waiting to get an answer from them -- and eventually I have to call or email them a second or third time till they bother to respond.

I realize people are busy -- but I really try to get back to people within 24-48 hours. Why can't people extend the same courtesy to me? I hate feeling like a pest, but dammit! Answer your email! Return your phone calls!

(For some reason this seems to also pertain to my personal life too -- you call or email someone to make plans and they never get back to you. Or if they do, it's usually too late.)

Thanks for letting me vent a little.

I always answer calls and emails (unless they are from unsolicited cold callers). At work, I've determined who procrastinates the most and always put a flag reminder on the emails I send them. Then it pops up later on their screen as well as on mine, so that I can easily bug them again.

That drives me crazy! And sometimes when people do respond to an email (in personal life, anyway), they just send a real quickie that fails to respond to the thing you most wanted them to respond to.

I think I'll sign off this post now before I get into a torrential rant on the subject. :-)