I know this is hard for people. Well, it must be for some people, anyway...
We had someone the other day, contact us and want to come on a specific date. I confirmed that we were talking about this month (we'd been talking about this month vs. next month), and they said, yes, this month. So, I ask, what time? This was on a Friday. Lets fast forward to the following Thursday... and I had not yet heard from this person. Therefore... I had gone and listed the chinchilla, and had another nice family come forward to adopt it, and put down a deposit on it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not 12 hours after the second family had put down their deposit, I get an email from the first person, mentioning that it turned out, they had to work on the day we'd talked about, and they asked if they could come another day instead. Sorry to say... but a little late.
This is where communication comes in handy. Had this person said to me -- somewhere, between Friday and the following Thursday -- "hey, I know we talked about me coming over on that one day, but I might have to work... not sure at this point... so can I let you know later in the week, and we go from there?" -- this may have turned out significantly differently. As the case was... I didn't hear from this person for just shy of a week... and to me, that signals disinterest. In my experience, when people really want to adopt, they get back to you within a day or two. Anything longer than that... and most likely, they will NOT be getting back to you. Of course, the exceptions exist -- being out of town, so on and so forth -- but in general, this is true.
Another example -- I have had people miss appointments with no notification or anything to let me know they're not coming. When I contact them, they'll get back to me, and inform me that their car broke down. Now... before you say anything... the car didn't break down that morning. If it did, I could sort of understand, they need to get it fixed, they are trying to arrange rides to wherever they really need to go (which may or may not include here)... I can see this getting lost in the shuffle. However, it usually goes like this -- "Hey! Sorry we missed the appointment, our car broke down a week ago." Maybe I'm old school, but if I have no car, I look in my planner and see what all will be affected, and let those places know. If I can't get to the doctor's office, I will cancel the appointment. If I can't make a lunch date with a friend, I let the friend know. Looking and planning ahead is a good thing, come on!
Possibly the best example (though... most likely an example of laziness + not planning ahead) -- I have two people who were doing some work here for the rescue, and I contacted them the one day, maybe 5 pm. I asked them, could they come around 10:30 / 11 am, on the following morning (before you say, that's awfully short notice, these people did tell me they only needed 1 hour notice to come by... and between 5 pm and 10:30 am is just shy of 17 hours). They said maybe they could come, they would let me know... when they responded at 10:30 pm. I hate last minute stuff, so you may have guessed, my immediate response to this was (in my head, of course)... when are they going to let me know, when they're supposed to be here in the morning, and it's already later at night? Well, let's ignore that for a second and fast forward to the following morning. I get a message at 10 am, saying they can come... but they just asked someone for a ride, and they don't think they can find one (which begs the question... why tell me they can come... before they have found a way to get here?). Long story short, they never did find a ride, and didn't come by. But... the point for me is... they knew, since 5 pm the previous day, that they might want to come by and work. So, naturally.... they wait until 10 am (mind you, when they're supposed to BE HERE at 10:30/11 am), to ask people for a ride, and they're surprised when they can't find a ride on such short notice! Me, I would have been asking people the night before, and trying to get something lined up for the morning. Cause that's how things work... you know you have to be somewhere, so you arrange, as early as possible, so you have the most time as you possibly can... to make arrangements. I mean... common sense, no?
It can't be just me that plans ahead and finds these sort of things to be aggravating.
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