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.
“No child left behind”… The bar is so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell.
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.
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.
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!”
TIL about BLUF. thanks for that.
You seem riled up! Is it because of your work? What do you do for work?
-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
Yes, I think I found the problem if that reply is any indication and not a complete joke.
I respect the detail provided therein.
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 😛
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 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.
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.
I assume that all commenters are not American since Americans are illiterate and therefore could not read or reply to this post
😂 🤣
Maybe some paragraphs or line breaks…?
The more education a person has, the less they read.
What makes you believe this?
I’ve worked with highly educated people in multiple fields - libraries, engineering, education, and marketing. The more letters after a person’s name, the less they read any messages.
Marketing=Educated? I don’t think so!
Been in school a long time=yes; educated=no.
We have a difference of opinion, but I’ll say you’re not wholly wrong.
Growing up has made me realize there were never any adults in the room
Just overgrown children in adult bodies
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 they style of The Ring to vigorously pimp slap them.
