Why don't people read their emails?

For the most part the answer is pretty simple. People send out a few hundred e-mails with things like the joke of the day and everyone learns to just ignore any e-mail from them. Then when they send out something that actually is important everyone just ignores the e-mail just like all of their others.

I know why I miss emails. Because I just counted 380 junk emails received in 3 days. All now deleted including the ONE that I didn't mean to. [and I won't pay for an email filter, why should I?]

380! Holy sheep snot!

These days I have a pretty sedate job so mot much email traffic. But a couple of years ago, when I was regional product head, I used to get over 250 emails a day (and I am talking abt work emails here). Even if I took 1 minute to read a single email, it was over 4 hrs of my time to read my inbox - we develop the art of speed reading, and respond to only those which were critical ones.

I still prefer picking up the phone and talking, and then following it up with email.

I easily get 150 to 300 work related emails a day. Everything is an email in a paperless business(which really means about all but the legal binding contract stuff is email). I fight to keep my quota of emails less than 80 megs.
For example I just looked and I have 3,370 emails inbound and outbound in the active email and 14,444 in my archive storage.
The active I try to keep at 3 months and the archives are about a years works then they get burned to a storage tape somewhere.

Onyx,

That's a problem that has existed in the workplace long before emails were invented. There have always been people in the workplace who were known as the repositories of knowledge about the job and willing to teach others. There have also always been people in the workplace who refuse to make efforts to retain any workplace knowledge because it is so much more convenient to ask someone else. And then we have those folks who horde all the information and knowledge to themselves and dispense it on a need to know basis in an effort to make themselves irreplaceable.

Having not too long ago worked in a large corporation I found it was acceptable for someone not to read nor respond to their email--however I just couldnt understand it myself.
I realize the whole junk email, I even realize the I dont want to work or I dont have the time to read them all but, what I dont understand is the tolerance.
I would send out reports compiled from emails sent to me from different departments and it was AMAZING how many asked where it was, why they didnt get it, etc etc. I started using that lovely tool of read reciept and began taking off the list those who didnt read the report for two consecutive presentations. Most never complained about not getting it but, it was funny.
The other thing would be that if they didnt read an email then they could claim ignorance of an issue--how nice for them but, you know if its something important you probably should give it a glance. And if your bosses assistant is sending you a meeting request you might want to really try to get to that one. However I always liked when I put in the information on those and still they asked me what they were needed for--only to forward over to the boss to have him say-because I said so. After a while they understood it wasnt me inviting them to hang out for a while doh!
I guess in some places its just about how much you can get away with not doing, and this one was pretty much top of the line in that department--imagine my perplexity when some copies were needed and I said I would go run them off quick and everyone looked at me like I had three heads...what, its below me? Its not in my job description? Wierd stuff all the way around.
Anyway....bottom line is perhaps it should be in the job description: Must read email to best of abilities daily and keep those in an orderly manner.
My new boss was amazed that I keep up to date, on top of and in perfect order all of the email....its the only way to do it, why doesnt everyone give it a try? Then again, that'd be like work.

I read an interesting article in Time last week. . . bosses are reporting that email is so slow and people answer and read it so infreuquently that they've begun outfitting their employees with im programs in hopes of being able to reach them. . .

It took my mom about a month to learn HOW to check her work email, and now she gets bored with it and only remembers to check once a week or so. That reason hasn't been mentioned yet :-)

The company I was at before my current employer required you to check your email twice a day. They monitored it - and you got three kicks at the can for forgetting. They were great proponents at the read-receipt thing. I used to check the options when stuff came in - and then warn my co-workers if we'd been sent something that was 'tagged'.

Hmm. . . some of us wouldn't last a week!

Some people didn't last long.
The joy of the huge American corporation.

I understand that logic, but I'm usually at the other end of the logic, and its exasperating. It works like this: I have to send out important info and instructions to 10, 20, 30, 40 people. Only way to do it quickly is e-mail of course. Now mostly, those who work below a certain level are no problem: they read it, act on it, you hear of it only once they've finished accordingly. But then there are the "always busy" people, usually a little higher up. They are always busy, get too much e-mail, so "of course" they have no time "to read all those e-mails". They prefer to "just call".

Great. So I get to have to explain the same things, over and over, that I already described in great detail in my e-mail, to those people once they start calling, one by one. It costs an EXORBITANT amount of time. "More efficient"? For them perhaps. For me, it would save me a third of my working time if they'd just bloody read the stuff they were sent in the first place.

Its usually always the same persons who cause the problem. You dont wanna know how often I get to have to "iron things out" with them, as they appear on the phone, in some kind of panic or confusion or resentment, with some story about how "they knew nothing of this", "when was that decided", "i need to know right now what i need to do and i couldnt reach you just now". Time and again, it concerns stuff that was IN THEIR BLOODY E-MAIL. Efficiency my ass.

PRINCESSASH!!!!

And looking very happy, too.

Because the junk email...
The reason people do not read their emails is that there are too many junk emails, especially the MICROSOFT hotmail!!!

Onyxelle, did you get the e-mail I sent you?

I haven't heard back from you -- have you checked your e-mail?

hahaha you're tooooo cute gus

I don't get the junk email thing. I'm sure my company must be the only one on earth with a decent filter. I've had an email account for a year at work, and not one junk email in that time.