Black Holes

Black holes have been frequent this week. What I mean by a black hole is a situation where I send some information to someone that requires a response, and for all the response I get I might as well have sent the information to a black hole. This, as you might imagine, is really irritating.

I am trying to have some sympathy. I imagine we all get deluged with a large amount of information, and it's easy to let some emails go unanswered that you meant to reply to, and too tempting to let the odd task go undone that you should do. But so many people seem to be taking the line "I'll only do it if I get pushed for it", and some are not even up to that level of service.

But it is getting more frequent, and when it's some support service that I am asking for and need, what I am supposed to do? Nag people? Play the heavy? Wait patiently? For how long?

Currently I am waiting for:

• Tech support to deliver the disks they promised (10 weeks and counting, 2 reminders sent)
• Urgent room booking issue (7 days)
• Tech support to do a small software set up task (9 days, 1 reminder)

Not a flicker of reponse from any of 'em. I wouldn't mind if they said they were terribly busy and estimated when they would be able to get to doing it, but just no response at all? That really shortens my fuse. To add to that, it's not even stuff I want done for myself, it's all stuff concerning the organisation of courses I'm running, and I'm not doing it for my benefit, I'm putting myself out to make sure that the courses are properly run for the students, and I can't even get the support I want? It's not like I've personally given them loads of tasks to do. We are talking one only per person.

Grrr.