Did it ever happened to you to enter in a restaurant or a bar and to not be greeted at all?

When it happens you feel like a ghost, like you’re invisible, like you don’t matter for them.
If the wait is long enough it’ll have all the right cards to make you angry.

But, on the other end, if they notice you even by adding a simple “Oh, we’ll be right there, wait a minute”, they are saying “I see you, I know you are there and you matter to me”.

It makes the wait less painful and adds context and value to the whole scene.

In a world dominated by technology feedback is still important. If we don’t have time to reply to a message in time, if we need to gather information and we wait until we’re done, or if we planned to answer next week, we’re acting like the waiter in the bar. Not noticing, ignoring the customer waiting at the door.

On the other hand, if we reply instantly to each customer that enters we could not be able to do our work, to serve the rest of the people.

Feedback is a critical part of any job. It allows you to say “I’m on it” and even if you’re not working a simple “I’ll get back to you tomorrow” will be enough to calm things down.
Feedback is what makes people feel understood, and it’s also what makes their action more meaningful, because, without it, we’re like lonely travelers in a forest, hoping someone will laugh at our joke while nobody is there.