When beepers emerged as a new communications tool, a client told me he was going to get me one. I thanked him but refused. “I will not be ‘beeped,'” I told him. If he needed me, he could call my office, and if I wasn’t there or able to take his call, he could leave a message. I would get back to him. Then again, my clients knew I would always get back to them as soon as possible. It never occurred to me to do otherwise. These were my clients.

The ubiquity of being constantly available has changed the rules for many in ways that were easily foreseen. When email and texting became a “thing,” it was a glorious means of communication in the sense that someone could reach out to you at their convenience and you, in turn, could get back at yours. It could have been wonderful. It is for some of us. But for others, it’s too much of a burden to endure.

It was a Tuesday night. In my apartment, I was doing three things at once — packing for a short business trip, trying to get dinner on the table for my family and taking turns with my husband to calm a crying baby. Behind me, one work Slack alert after another dinged from my laptop. I ignored them all. During dinner, a text popped up on my phone. “Where are u????” asked my colleague.

I wanted to scream. Instead, I didn’t reply to the text. This wasn’t the first time I’d ignored a digital summons, and it wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful or malicious — but at the same time I knew what I wanted my silence to communicate: This is not a priority for me right now. You are not my priority.

Why would this make anyone want to scream? Someone texted someone who was busy with other things at that moment. Was the texter unaware that it was possible that the person texted might not be sitting there, doing nothing, just in case the texter felt like texting at that moment? If the textee didn’t reply immediately, was that “ghosting” or did the textee have her own life, her own things to do, that were more important in that moment than replying because someone out there in the universe had the ability to make a sound emit from their smartphone.

We can all agree that suddenly cutting off contact with a romantic partner or professional colleague, never to be heard from again, is rude and should happen much less than it currently does. But what about the other, less egregious ways we might blow off each other’s messages, especially at work? In these exhausting times, when so many are overburdened with family responsibilities, stress, grief and anxiety, perhaps we should let go of the outdated, demanding requirement to participate in ceaseless back-and-forth conversations.

Being tied up with dinner and the kids is part of ordinary life. It’s not that these are “exhausting” times, or that we’re “overburdened” with a litany of traumatic events. Everything isn’t overwhelming unless you get paid by the hyperbole. That you aren’t available to everyone who dings at the moment need not be justified by “family responsibilities, stress, grief and anxiety,” which suggests you have far deeper problems causing the need to scream than too many texts or emails.

Many of us have no choice but to triage, as we are flooded with Slack messages, emails, texts and Zoom requests, and must make constant real-time decisions about which ones warrant an instantaneous response, which ones we need to think about before answering and which others aren’t really worth our attention. All this digital noise can lead to a state of “cognitive overload,” which researchers in a paper on remote work during the pandemic published last year warned “may result in ineffective information processing, confusion, loss of control, psychological stress — or even an increase of depressive symptoms.”

Buried in this rationalization for instability is the notion that every ding demands an “instantaneous response.” There is a broad spectrum of response time between “at the moment” and as soon as possible. Buried between these two is the more serious, and troubling, problem. If you don’t respond instantaneously, do you respond at all? People gripe about having dozens of unread emails, building everyday until they are overwhelming.

What they overlook is that these emails didn’t build up by magic, but because you failed to deal with them. The problem isn’t your “stress, grief and anxiety,” but your neglect. If these are emails from your employer, your co-workers, your clients, your failure to make the time to deal with them isn’t their fault, or the fault of some magic overwhelming universe, but your failure. You just didn’t do what you need to do.

While some will be offended by the failure to get an “instantaneous” response, because it never occurs to narcissists that other people have their own lives and aren’t bit players in the narcissist’s grand drama where the world revolves around them, most people aren’t troubled by a reply an hour, a day, even a week later. That’s not “ghosting,” the disappearance of a person from the virtual universe when communication inexplicably ceases, never to reappear.

But then, there is such a thing as ghosting, from “romantic” exchanges that start and then, poof, disappear, and employment where a business interviews a potential employee and then never communicates with them again. Once you’ve engaged in communications, have the decency to complete them, even if the reply is that you’re tied up now and will get back to them soon. Do we need a special word like “triage” to explain something so mundane?

Being “triaged” might not feel much better than being ghosted if you have an urgent question for your boss, client or colleague — I’ve been on that side of the interaction, too. But it’s at least more realistic, relatable and human. I’ve found that it forces me to confront my own main-character syndrome — the idea that we all play a starring role in the movie that is our life, with everyone else merely the supporting cast. It makes me acknowledge that the “ghosts” are, like me, full, complicated people with off-screen demands that might often pull them away from digital conversations. It might also force me to do my own triage — do I really need this question answered, or can I make the decision myself and move on?

Technology isn’t an excuse to be rude, and hiding behind your litany of excuses doesn’t change the responsibility to complete the exchange. If it can’t be done “instantaneously,” then do it as soon as you can. And if your real problem isn’t your mental health, but your narcissistic neglect of dealing with communications to which you know you should respond, then cut the crap and recognize that they’re not the problem. You are.

I empty my “inbox” daily. It’s not some Pavlovian reaction to a ding going off, but the ordinary responsibility that one person shows another. I don’t need to call it “triage,” as if someone is about to bleed out, and I don’t “ghost” anyone, not that I’ve ever swiped for romance. And I still don’t need a beeper as my clients know that I will get back to them as soon as possible, which is the best anyone can do as long as they actually do it.