There was this guy at my last job who I constantly made fun of. One day he came to work and you could see his undershirt through his dress shirt. It was a woman’s undershirt with spaghetti straps. We all laughed hysterically at his expense. He shook his fist, cursed my name and swore he would get me.

But I recently came to find that the company was treating him like shit. Pretty much literally. He’s a professional with over 20 years of experience and they had him doing menial jobs. Eventually they put him on a job that an intern could do and handed him a letter from HR that said if he didn’t get it done in a super short amount of time, they’d fire him.

So with no backup plan, he quit.

I didn’t really love this guy, other than the joy that making fun of him gave me, but we shared a common friend and she started telling me what was going on. So I felt bad and started emailing him jobs that I was getting emailed about.

He was very grateful, as I would be in that situation, and said we should all get lunch. I thought maybe I was wrong about him.

But as the weeks went on, I would send him the jobs and include notes like “hey man, this isn’t EXACTLY what you want, but you should consider it for the interview.” I would hear nothing back. Then I would say “hey, how’s it going? Finding anything?” Nothing. And I could feel myself getting a bit annoyed.

Then I heard from our mutual friend who said “hey, can you send the details on that awesome training course you took to that guy?”

And I said no. Straight up.

It would take me time to dig through my email and figure out the name of the course, find the website, send the link and this guy doesn’t even care to respond to my emails. So I’m not going to waste my time.

He could easily be too ashamed to respond to me or be feeling too hopeless to even look at these jobs. Or he could hate me (I don’t think that’s the case).

So he’s basically burned a bridge with someone who was willing to help him; someone who was in a similar boat a little over a year ago from the same company and found a job two months later. AND would have given him any advice he needed, showed him techniques for finding a job quickly, etc. But he fucked it up and probably because of pride or laziness.

Many INFPs I know have the tendency to not reply. In fact, I do the same thing – I’m not going to claim I’m an awesome socialite nor that I’m good at maintaining relationships; I suck at it! But it’s so important to see how we go about closing the doors in our lives and changing that behavior so that we’re not left curled up in the corner, crying to ourselves that we have no friends left or that we can’t get jobs because we don’t know anyone, etc, etc.

Without other people in our lives, we will die. Without people in our lives, we will settle into mediocrity.

So be considerate of other peoples’ feelings. That’s why you were given this awesome sense of empathy that burns like a flood lamp throughout every inch of your soul.

Tell me below or through email, how have people pissed you off with not responding? How have you pissed others off by not responding and what has it cost you?

Update: 6/16/14 This post was not well-received because I sound like a jerk. I’ve created a newer post explaining myself here.