The Art of Missing Mails

People miss emails.

Yes! They do. Often I send out a mail to someone and then HAVE TO send them a 'saral mobile sandesh' or SMS that I've sent them a mail!

Because people very often miss the mail and SMS me indignantly, "I thought I was supposed to receive an email from you"...which leaves me wondering - It could not have gone into their Spam since we've been corresponding regularly. When I re-affirm that I have indeed mailed them, they usually get back with a sheepish response - "Oh I missed it"...

No I-mean-it apologies either because they miss my next mail too!

And some lost souls actually never see the mail at all, even after the reminder SMS. "I'm so sorry I was too busy..." or "Yaar, my Inbox is full of mail... Its so difficult to see which ones I actually want to open..."

How busy can busy be? And are you an efficient professional if you're missing work related email, out of sheer 'oversight' or a cluttered Inbox? And an excuse like this is supposed to work when most mail service providers offer you the comfort of labelling incoming mail and assigning them to different folders?

If you're being cluttered with unimportant emails/notifications, why not 'unsubscribe' or block the senders?

And most of all, if your Inbox is cluttered with unnecessary emails, why club personal and professional together?

Yeah! I know! All prudent questions that most people I know often miss mails will respond to with a "Oh may be I'm just not as efficient as you'....as if that is supposed to make me feel any better!

Sometimes I am tempted to forward these people an article I wrote for a tech magazine once - Email Etiquettes, followed by a SMS - Pls chk mail. And even then I know that most of them will miss it :-)

So today I doff my hat to those really busy professionals, masters in their fields who multi task effectively managing successful careers, homes, and children, (in particular the Editor of a magazine and my darling friend Aekta) who NEVER miss a mail....and who always respond (even if its just a simple sentence or phrase - Will revert).

Now that I am done with my rambling, I need to go reply to my mails...