Rant mode engaged. I’m a state pencil pusher. I administer benefits for elected officials, their staff, with regular administrative employees. I’m 100% convinced that as a whole, Americans are functionally illiterate. I will spend 30 minutes to an hour crafting an organized email with TL;DR bullet points at the end to have people call me to ask me a question that said email already answered. Bro/sis, did you even attempt to read the words on the page? It’s not an age thing, or an education thing either. It’s old people and young people. It’s elected officials, people with PhDs, masters, and JDs, along with highschool and college graduates. It’s gotten to the point that I will make people pull up the email I sent out to read along while I point out where in the text their questions were already answered. I’m one person doing the work of 3, and god damn I hate doing the same task over and over because people can’t be bothered to fucking read.
I moved to a small town where everybody knows everybody else and a lot of my friends have lived here for decades, if not their entire lives. I learned to stop asking for directions from them. They’ll all give me what they consider to be the simplest and most helpful way to get there, but it’s usually along the lines of “It’s next to where the old Eckerd’s store used to be, behind the Wallace Church parking lot”. What seems clear and obvious and simple to them means fuck all to me and anybody that hasn’t lived here since the 1980s.
One tool that helps me a lot, and let me just say I used to work in retail customer service, is to have some grace and give people the benefit of the doubt. There’s a good chance at least some of these people are also doing the job of 3 or more people as well, dealing with dozens and dozens of emails streaming in all day, and also lots going on in their lives in general. Yes, you put a lot of effort into that email, and maybe you’re the local giving perfectly succinct directions to an outsider.
You seem riled up! Is it because of your work? What do you do for work?
You are an evil evil person ;)
LOL. I thought the guy was asking for more info and didn’t realize it was probably a joke.
Yeah sorry 😛
-Process insurance enrollment in a state database that gets transmitted to the insurance carriers daily.
-Enrollment requires a metric fuck ton of paperwork. I make sure the paperwork is in order so it is in accordance with state laws on the books related to insurance enrollment for state workers so we can pass our audits. (I don’t know what happens if we fail audits, because I haven’t failed one yet.)
-Inform people as soon as they are eligible for insurance, educate them about the plans in general, how the ACA works, what constitutes preventative service, how to use the online tools with the insurance carriers to find providers and view claim information.
-Employees with issues bring me their EOBs and I will walk them through why something isn’t covered, or if it should be, conference calls with the insurance carriers and employee to attempt to resolve. I’ve assisted employees with filing insurance appeals, followed by external appeals with a neutral 3rd party through the state’s department of financial services to get insurance appeal denials overturned. (Those are my fucking favorite. Forcing our carriers to meet their contractual obligations is what I live for after working directly with insurance carriers for a decade and witnessing all the ways they fuck over their customer base.)
-Educate people on other benefits, like the state pension. Process enrollment into the state pension system in a second database, and our internal pay serve.
-Some benefits like flex spending for health care require the employee to enroll themselves. Aside from teaching people what the benefit is with the accompanying literature, I also have to help people troubleshoot self enrollment in those products because they couldn’t be arsed to look at my step by step instructions with screenshots.
-Take calls from people that show up to their doctor/vision/dental appointment without their god damned insurance information and they want it now. Spoiler alert, that’s not information I have access to due to HIPAA law passed 30 years ago in the 1990’s, but there’s a plethora of 50-80 year old adult men that are happy to cuss me out for not acting like their personal mommy/secretary.
-In person on boarding, with less than 24 hours notice that on boarding is happening, without the signed contracts I need to determine what the fuck an employee is eligible for.
If your emails are as extensive as your reply, I totally get why people are overwhelmed and don’t read them lol
I respect the detail provided therein.
Yes, I think I found the problem if that reply is any indication and not a complete joke.
“No child left behind”… The bar is so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell.
I understand… unfortunately, from the other side, I have received so many emails/links/leaflets with woefully out of date information, that I often still try to get direct contact with someone on the inside to confirm stuff.
Lately, I’ve spend an afternoon queuing and getting documents for a government mcGuffin, just to be told at the third meeting with the same staff member that I was an exception and all that stuff did not apply to me at all, I had to go to another office and bring a different set of documents.
I had to directly contact my health insurance three times in one month because the information on their website was out of date.
I had to directly request some “public” documents from HR because the website was last updated early 2024, but there was a law change January 2025.
So many instances like these make me skim emails and often reach out directly. I’m sorry it bites you in the ass.
I also get that some people learn better by hearing things verbally as opposed to seeing/reading information. I don’t mind clarification call backs, as in, a person leads the conversation with, “This is what I read, am I understanding it correctly?” It’s the calls where it’s clear there was no effort to even skim the original communication that make me want to flip my desk.
People often only really absorb the information from the first paragraph of something like an email, so make sure the critical stuff is there.
I have found it helpful to put the TLDR at the top, rather than the bottom of the email. Title that section something like ‘Executive Summary’ so people subconciously feel more important reading it. Follow with intermediate levels of detail, then the full level of detail, if needed.
It takes a bit more effort to write in this multi stage way, at least until you’re used to it, but it means the information you’re trying to transmit is more likely to actually get absorbed, which leads to fewer time wasting phone calls or ‘as per my last email’ mails. If your recipient feels like they’ve already grasped the basics of the information from the TLDR they’re also more likely to read on, whilst actually paying attention. If you need information from them, make sure you list the exact points you need, with once sentence describing each to reduce the cognative load on the recipient.
Of course, none of this works every time, but even saving yourself one call a day can be a massive benefit, both mentally and productively.
I know you’re just explaining, not excusing, but if it’s literally you’re job, then you can put the effort in to read the whole goddamn email.
Whilst I absolutely agree that they should read the whole email, I look at it from the opposite side; I want them to absorb the important information so they don’t bother me with trivial or repititious questions, and I know they’ll absorb information at the start of my mail with a higher probability than information at the end, so I put the critical stuff at the front and repeat it in more detail later. It’s for my sake, rather than to make their job easier, that it also makes their job easier is a bonus.
One of the most effective rules I’ve ever heard is “make it easy for them to give you what you want”. In this case, the poster wants them to stop bothering them with trivial questions, so make the answers easy to digest and they can more easily not bother you. It holds in pretty much any situation when you want something from someone, from asking for a raise to ordering at a resturant. It’s proven invaluable advice over the years.
I get it, and I’ve definitely gotten better at writing emails over the years… It still kind of annoys me though.
If you write a wall of text and put bullets at the end, you lost them already.
More modern approach to the widespread lack of attention spans is BLUF (bottom line, up front). One or two (max) sentences about what they need to do, at the beginning of the email, not the end.
Growing up has made me realize there were never any adults in the room
Just overgrown children in adult bodies
I had a guy “quick call?” me, screen share my email and read his written response aloud to me before sending. I was speechless.
That seems like a great strategy. You know the other person got your entire message, but you also have everything in writing, just in case.
Have you tried whacking their hands with hammers? It won’t help the literacy thing, but it’ll make you feel good for a bit.
No, but I often imagine reaching through the computer screen to have my hand emerge from their monitor in the style of The Ring to vigorously pimp slap them.
You need to Google “what is the average reading level in America” . The answers will clear up a great deal about scientific literacy, reading comprehension, and poorly educated voting block.
Google makes the picture look way rosier than my anecdotal opinion.
I assume that all commenters are not American since Americans are illiterate and therefore could not read or reply to this post
😂 🤣
Humans run on less power than a fucking light bulb so I’m never surprised. It frustrates me, too. I’m also pretty sure AI is meant to fill in those follow up answers (e.g. find the answer from your text) but it’s just not there yet due to made up nonsense-- and even then it really shouldn’t be needed, especially for well read people.
Personally, my theory is across all groups, not enough Americans get adequate sleep, water, nutrition, and (most importantly) thoughtful quiet time without work demands- including no social media, lol. Overlooking shit, misspeaking, forgetting what you just saw or read, making impulse decisions, being selfish- all symptoms when someone’s needs aren’t met.
I’ve had the same problem for years. No matter how clear, simple and easy you make it; they still fail to grasp basically anything.
Bullet points, numbered lists, bold, underlined, BLUF, TLDR; nothing gets through to them.
My partner still says I can’t k**l them.
I text my companies fleet manager today to say my employee is transferring in 2 weeks.
That short, literally. His reply…
How soon is she moving?
I literally screenshot the fucking message, highlighted the whole sentence and sent that.
He said, “thanks!”
This is the face I make all day long.
TIL about BLUF. thanks for that.
Op, start writing each person that reads and doesn’t read. If you get to a kilo over, you have a paper to publish!😆
Starving and illiterate is a bad bad combo.
I don’t get how and why people prefer a phone call. Quality of audio on a phonecalls is abysmal, it’s pretty hard to re-read the same info (you can record if you set up this way, not all recorders have access to input audio as is and just records whatever it can from the mic). And I need to have that spare minute while I’m not engaged in any other activities that require my immediate attention.
Why some people can’t just mail the same thing.
Maybe some paragraphs or line breaks…?
