Courtesy?

[Sonic#]

A Question:

Let's say that you're in a student group on campus, one that's centered on going to certain debate conferences.

The leader/president/captain of this team sends out an email with a meeting place and time, which you get about 5 days before the meeting.

Now, let's say you're unable to go to the meeting, but you're still interested. The leader hasn't explicitly asked you to email. What do you do?

...

I've had this situation happen to me, as the captain of a team. It's made it tougher on me. And... I expected emails from people that weren't able to make it, but only got any notification at all from three or four out of about ten.

I'm wondering here... am I expecting some courtesy that goes outside of normal bounds? Am I unreasonable in expecting an email when I didn't ask for it, because I assumed that was the protocol?

[Kizyr]

Unreasonable? Not really. But mistaken, perhaps.

The thing is, different people will have different ideas on what's standard or expected. What you should do, not as far as what's "right", but what's most effective, is just to explicitly state RSVP for people who can or cannot make it. The thing is, unless you've explicitly asked for an email response, then many or most people won't put it in their minds to explicitly respond. KF

[phyco126]

What Kiz said, if it where me, I would likely not respond to the e-mail, being on that's not all that big on communication with people.

[Alunissage]

I've found that even if I ask the scientists I need responses from to explicitly tell me yes or no they have a tendency to not answer until I nag them. Most recently I was sending around applications by students wishing to work in the lab, and even if I say "tell me if you're not taking any student apprentices this year" some of them still assume no response = no, when I have no way of knowing if the silence is that or if it's because they're interviewing the student and still deciding. Ph.D.s, these people are. So I certainly think it's appropriate to say something of the sort, and in fact that you should spell it out as plainly as possible.

[Pisces]

Take it from someone whose jobs the past four years have all involved constant follow up on important deadlines:

People are idiots. You have to hound them.

But yes, it's common courtesy to reply "yes" or "no," but not everyone knows that. I always put, in anything I need a response to, "please let me know either way" or "please RSVP" etc.

[Sonic#]

Okay, I can accept being mistaken.

When this first happened, I was really frustrated, but I've had time to breathe now. I'm going to take it with a grain of salt, and be more explicit next time.