Since (almost) no one wants to admit they don’t have enough decision making capacity or can’t prioritize using it for whatever you’re asking (at least now a days it seems, since someone will post them saying they don’t care on social media and they’ll get fired), you will often see defacto rate limiting or pushback in other ways.
Common ways you’ll see in real life:
- only responding to the one item they want to respond to.
- ever increasing delays in responses or ‘missed emails’ (when you try again they’ll respond)
- half responses which don’t actually address the problem or answer your question (but are easy to generate).
- redirection to another - hard to reach - authority even if not appropriate (as they aren’t spending the time to figure out what your actual question is)
- straw manning your question/request as something else they already have an answer to and then answering that.
- adding your question/request to a backlog they aren’t responsible for and then ignoring it forever since it’s now ‘on the list’
- making up increasingly more complicated paperwork/procedure hoops with increasingly less pleasant user experiences
And many more. For non-decision making backlogs/overloads, there are also the
- ‘decades long queue’ method of shedding load like the old eastern bloc (and some healthcare systems)
- ‘you need a permit’ (but there is no actual perform form)
-‘we only work during (impossible hours here)’ etc.
It all boils down to they can’t care enough to get you want you want, so you either have to make them care (which will be met with generally well earned hostility), or find a way to get them to care (which may be impossible). In many countries, getting someone to care requires a bribe.
Near as I can tell, we’ve all been deluding ourselves about our own human natures too. Nearly everyone is exhausted and on the edge of burnout.
It causes predictable behaviors in everyone. Trying harder to make it not true just makes the inevitable reckoning worse.