To Reply or Not to Reply…

Piwakawaka considering its reply to my call

I saw red this week when a cycle tourist begged to stay with us for the night and we offered him a bed, then he didn’t turn up or send a message to say he wasn’t coming. We have a rocky relationship with the Warmshowers cycle tourist hosting network. Warmshowers is like CouchSurfing for cycle tourists. We learned about Warmshowers a decade ago from cycle tourists we met in Tajikistan and joined up when we returned to New Zealand. After hundreds of bed nights given at pa harakeke, and less than 10 bed nights stayed with other people, we are now jaded, despite a lot of the people who have stayed being nice and interesting and helpful.

The problem is, when we try to contact hosts in other countries, they don’t respond. The solution to the problem is to contact lots of potential hosts and see which one answers. However, this totally goes against the grain for me. I don’t want to bother lots of people with a request when I can only stay in one place. I don’t want to have to tell someone who has kindly offered to have me stay that I don’t want to stay with them. So I send out my individual emails, wait for a reply before contacting another person, and mostly get to stay nowhere.

The other part of being jaded is receiving frequent requests from people who want to stay and having to deal with them. We were getting a request a day, or more than one a day, until I put a relatively unfriendly message on the Warmshowers site! It’s hard to write back to lots of people saying, “No, you can’t stay.” But there are only so many visitors we can cope with. So write back I did, and continue to do, even explaining my reasons for not being able to host people. To me, not writing back is not acknowledging the person on the other end of the communication. It’s leaving them wondering if you got the message, if you will respond, and when you might repond. It feels…rude.

I am also a determined responder in my work life. I see response as part of my clarity of action, one of my points of difference. If I respond, people know I got their message. Often it’s as simple as sending a thumbs up, or a ‘Thanks.’ Why do other people not do this given how quick and easy it is?

When I asked this question, one friend said they don’t respond to messages unless a response is specifically required because they get lots of messages. I understand that, although I get lots of messages too – up to 150 a day when I’ve got a major work project on. My need to be clear still outweighs the effort of responding in brief. But I can see there comes a day for many people when they just can’t cope with the load.

In my recent work project, one person mentioned they have 4,500 unread emails in their inbox. Another countered with, “I’ve got 20,000.” I’m unclear whether 20,000 unread emails is something to boast about. However, it’s enough to make you want to minimise time spent dealing with emails. Then again, why doesn’t the person just delete the 20,000 emails? Or the portion of the 20,000 more than 2 months old? It’s not like they are going to have the time to trawl through the emails, nor is the content likely to be current if they ever do undertake the mammoth task.

Everyone is getting overwhelmed by the volume of communications constantly flung at us and not replying is one way of coping. The downside is that not replying becomes the norm, rather than the exception. Not replying extends from communications to which no reply is necessary, to communications where the potential recipient would really like to know if you are coming to stay at their house.

When I put a negative review of the no-show cycle tourist on WarmShowers the day after he was supposed to come, the cyclist decided he could communicate.

“Really sad you said that,” he replied. “When you see I have a really hard and long journey behind me and fight much. So a lil bit of respect for what I’m doing. We are all cyclists and doing hard on the road sometimes. So not to answer directly isn’t a big thing.”

For the cyclist, responding isn’t a big deal. There are a plethora of people out there who feel the same. If I could figure out who would like a reply and who doesn’t care I could save myself a whole lot of messaging. I could even learn not to care, be like them…

So far, my attempt at not caring has gone poorly. I wrote back to the cyclist, “You want a free place to stay but it’s too much effort for you to answer people who offer you one. If that’s too hard, time for you to go home.”