Dear Margar-etiquette,
I manage a retail store and recently called a customer to let her know that an order she had been waiting for had arrived. She didn’t answer, so I left a voicemail.
A few days later, the customer came into the store and asked to speak with me. To my surprise, she was quite angry that I had left her a voicemail instead of sending her a text. She said she doesn’t listen to voicemail and expected me to contact her by text.
I was shocked that this was such a big deal. If you have voicemail set up, isn’t it reasonable for someone to leave you a message? And if you strongly prefer text messages, shouldn’t you let a business know that?
Apparently I Should Have Texted
Dear Apparently,
Apparently you missed the memo. Or perhaps it was sent by text. Communication has certainly changed. We now have phone calls, voicemail, texts, email, messaging apps, and direct messages, yet somehow having more ways to communicate has made figuring out how to communicate more complicated.
And there is definitely a generational piece to this. While we should be careful about assuming everyone in a particular age group communicates the same way, different generations often have different...