They are frantic to answer their phone the SECOND it rings. Even if they are eating, or worse: playing bridge or in mid-sentence talking to somebody, they can’t bear not to respond and would not dream of ignoring it till a more opportune and less impolite moment.

But they ignore their e-mails, many often for days on end.

99,9 percent of all phone calls can wait, at the very least ten-fifteen minutes if you ask me, and if people can’t be bothered to record a voice message, or send a whatsapp or email instead, it was not important, whereas the majority of emails requires some kind of attention and response.

So is that also just part of the German IT Angst, or why are people slaves of their telephone and not of their emails?