The Cow That Wouldn’t Zoom: Why Employees Ignore Emails, Policies, and Everything in Between

Sitting in my usual spot at the corner table of the coffeeshop, I sipped my cappuccino and let the warm hum of conversations and clinking cups wash over me. That’s when I noticed a young mother and her toddler settling in at a table nearby.

The mother gently plopped her oversized bag on the chair next to her and pulled out a small picture book. The toddler, a little boy with sticky fingers and curls that bounced with every movement, squealed with delight at the sight of it. I smiled to myself and returned to scrolling through my phone, thinking it was refreshing to see a child excited by something analog for a change.

But what happened next caught me completely off guard. As his mother opened the book to a page with a vibrant illustration of a farmyard, the toddler leaned in with intense curiosity. He placed both of his tiny hands on the image of a cow, and then—as naturally as if he’d been doing it forever—he pinched his fingers together and tried to zoom in.

At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Surely not. But he did it again, this time frowning with frustration when the cow didn’t enlarge. His little brow furrowed in the universal expression of, "Why isn’t this working?" He even let out a small grunt, as if the book had betrayed him. The mother watched, half amused and half exasperated, and gently explained, “It’s not a tablet, sweetie. You can’t zoom in.”

The toddler, undeterred, tried again. He swiped at the page, then tapped it—the gestures we all know too well from years of scrolling and pinching and tapping on glass screens. n that moment, it struck me: this wasn’t just a humorous anecdote. It was a reflection of how technology has conditioned even the youngest among us to expect the world to behave like a screen—interactive, instant, and effortless.

When the book stubbornly refused to respond, he turned his big, questioning eyes to his mother, as if to say, "What kind of defective toy is this?"

I couldn’t help but chuckle, quietly at first, then louder when the mother caught my eye and shrugged with a wry smile. "He’s used to my phone," she said, half-apologetically, half-defeated.

The toddler, now visibly annoyed, slammed the book shut with dramatic flair. His mother sighed and offered him a snack as a peace offering, while I sat there marveling at the absurdity and poignancy of the moment. Here was a child, barely old enough to form sentences, already conditioned to expect that the world would respond instantly to his demands. His frustration wasn’t just about the book—it mirrored a growing impatience across all ages, fostered by a world of seamless, simplified technology.

I thought about what that meant for his future, for all of our futures. If toddlers are this attuned to technology, what does it mean for their ability to engage with life’s more static, unchanging realities? Will books become relics, something children have to be taught how to use, like rotary phones or cassette tapes? Or will moments like this remind us of the importance of reintroducing the value of tangible, un-zoomable experiences?

As I finished my cappuccino and gathered my things, I glanced back at the toddler. He had calmed down and was now munching on a cracker. The book sat untouched on the table.

Why No One Reads Anymore—Not Even at Work

The boy’s frustration wasn’t unique—it was a reflection of a world that changes faster than anyone realize. There will come a day, when the idea that information could exist in a static, non-interactive format will be incomprehensible to an entire generation. And this shift won’t be limited to children. It will seep into every aspect of life, reshaping how people consume, process, and expect content to behave.

Now let's take a step back. Internal communication at my company isn’t immune to this shift either. I see it every day—nobody wants to read long guidelines, policies, or even emails. Sure, you can spend time crafting a detailed message, making sure it includes all the necessary context, only to watch as people skim the first few lines and then either ignore it or ask questions that were answered in the very email they didn’t finish.

Policies? They might as well not exist if they’re longer than a few bullet points. If a guideline is more than a page, it’s basically a historical document—revered in theory but never actually consulted. Even critical updates struggle to get attention. If there’s no TL;DR at the top or a quick, digestible version somewhere, I know most people won’t bother.

It’s not that my colleagues don’t care; they’re just conditioned by the way we consume information now. They expect internal communication to function like their social media feeds—instant, skimmable, and interactive. And honestly, I can’t blame them. But it makes me wonder: if even the people inside the company won’t engage with long-form content, how can we expect anyone else to?

If even internal communication—the backbone of how a company operates—struggles to hold people’s attention, what does that say about the future of workplace engagement? It’s not just about guidelines and policies; it’s about how information flows (or doesn’t) within the organization. Meetings feel redundant because nobody read the prep materials. Important strategic updates get lost in inboxes. Even critical security protocols risk being ignored because they weren’t delivered in a format that people could quickly process.

So what’s the solution? If we can’t fight the shift, we have to adapt to it. That means rethinking how we communicate internally, just as marketers have had to reinvent how they reach audiences. Maybe it’s time to ditch the long emails and multi-page PDFs in favor of bite-sized updates, interactive content, and AI-powered summaries. Video recaps, internal chatbots that answer policy questions in real time, even gamified learning modules—anything that makes essential information easy to absorb and harder to ignore.

It might feel like catering to short attention spans, but the reality is, this is how people consume information now. The companies that resist will keep shouting into the void, watching as their carefully written messages get lost in the endless stream of unread emails and unopened attachments. The ones that adapt? They’ll create workplaces where communication actually works—because it’s designed for the way people engage with content today, not for how they did a decade ago.

The Cost of Ignored Information

At first, it might seem harmless—people skimming emails, skipping policies, or glazing over internal updates. But when communication stops landing, the consequences start stacking up. Unread information doesn’t just disappear; it turns into mistakes, inefficiencies, and confusion that ripple through the company.

Take compliance policies, for example. They exist for a reason, but if employees don’t read or understand them, they might unknowingly violate company protocols. Suddenly, a seemingly minor oversight turns into a full-scale issue—maybe a missed security step that leaves sensitive data exposed or a policy misinterpretation that results in a compliance fine. And the worst part? When the fallout happens, someone will inevitably say, “Wait, I didn’t know about that.”

It’s not just about policies, either. Important updates meant to streamline work often get buried in inboxes, leading to employees operating on outdated or incorrect information. Teams waste time fixing mistakes that could have been avoided with a quick five-minute read. Projects stall because key details were missed. Leadership gets frustrated when initiatives don’t take off, unaware that the grand announcement they carefully drafted never got past the subject line for most employees.

And let’s talk about repetitive questions. When people don’t engage with written communication, they don’t stop needing the information—it just means they’ll ask for it elsewhere. Managers get stuck answering the same questions over and over. Colleagues waste time hunting down details that were already shared. Work slows down, not because people are incapable, but because the information flow has broken down.

The real cost of ignored communication isn’t just inefficiency—it’s friction. Decisions take longer, mistakes happen more frequently, and frustration builds up as people feel out of the loop. But the worst part? It’s avoidable. The issue isn’t that people don’t care—it’s that they’ve been conditioned to expect information to come in a way that matches how they actually consume content. And that’s the challenge we need to solve.

The Rise of ‘Fake Communication’ in the Workplace

At some point, communication in the workplace became more about the act of sending information than actually ensuring it was received and understood. Policies are published, emails are sent, Slack messages flood in—but is anyone really absorbing them? Or are we just going through the motions, pretending that communication is happening while everyone secretly relies on workarounds?

One of the biggest symptoms of this fake communication crisis is performative acknowledgment. People click “Mark as Read,” reply with a thumbs-up emoji, or nod in meetings without actually processing a word. It’s not that they don’t care—it’s just that there’s too much information, coming too fast, in formats that don’t match how they naturally engage. They trust that if something is truly urgent, it’ll be repeated later, either in another email, a Slack thread, or—worst case scenario—when they make a mistake and someone calls them out on it.

Then there’s the meeting paradox—the unnecessary gatherings that exist purely because written communication has failed. When people don’t read prep materials, someone inevitably decides, “Let’s just get everyone on a call.” Meetings become bloated, not because they’re productive, but because they’re now compensating for the fact that no one absorbs information outside of them. The company’s knowledge doesn’t live in documentation anymore—it lives in fragmented conversations, scattered across inboxes, Slack channels, and meetings that should have been emails (if emails actually worked).

This creates a dangerous dependency on instant communication. Instead of finding information in structured documents or previous messages, employees default to real-time interactions:

• “Hey, can you resend that?”
• “What was that update about again?”
• “Can you summarize the key points for me?”

Every one of these interactions disguises inefficiency as collaboration. Work doesn’t move faster—it slows down, buried under a never-ending cycle of asking and re-explaining. The irony? If internal communication was designed to match modern content habits—shorter, interactive, layered—people wouldn’t need to rely on workarounds in the first place.

But until that shift happens, we’re all just playing along—pretending that communication is working, when in reality, it’s just another unread message waiting for the next inevitable follow-up.

Reinventing Internal Communication for the TikTok Era

If people won’t read long emails, policies, or guidelines, the solution isn’t to keep sending them and hoping for a different outcome—it’s to change how we communicate. The way we process information has fundamentally shifted, and companies need to catch up.

Why are we still writing dense policy documents when employees expect swipeable, interactive content everywhere else in their lives? Why are we relying on 500-word emails when even LinkedIn posts get cut off after a few lines? The disconnect is obvious: workplace communication is stuck in the past, while everything outside of work has evolved into short-form, high-impact, and highly engaging content.

So what’s the alternative? Modernizing internal communication using the same principles that keep people glued to their screens outside of work. This doesn’t mean turning policies into dance videos (though, imagine the engagement). It means using formats that match real-world behavior:

• Interactive micro-content: Instead of sending a 10-page PDF, break it into bite-sized, interactive slides or an internal Instagram-style story.
• AI-powered chat summaries: Let people ask an internal AI assistant for quick answers instead of digging through outdated documents.
• Short-form video updates: If employees won’t read a 500-word update, they might watch a 30-second video with captions.
• Gamified learning: Turn key policies into quick quizzes or challenges, where engagement is rewarded.

This isn’t just about attention spans—it’s about reducing friction. People engage with content that is easy to absorb, quick to navigate, and formatted for skimming. When companies adapt their communication to reflect how people actually consume information, employees don’t just retain more—they stop needing constant reminders and clarifications.

The companies that get this right will see faster decision-making, fewer repetitive questions, and stronger engagement with critical updates. The ones that don’t? They’ll keep watching their messages disappear into the void, wondering why nobody reads anymore.

Back to the Boy and the Book

That toddler in the coffee shop wasn’t throwing a tantrum just because the book wouldn’t zoom—he was experiencing a fundamental disconnect between expectation and reality. He had been conditioned to believe that all information should be interactive, instantly accessible, and responsive to his touch. When faced with something static, his frustration wasn’t just about the book—it was about a world that wasn’t behaving the way he had come to expect.

Isn’t that exactly what’s happening in the workplace?

We expect employees to engage with policies, emails, and updates as if they exist in a vacuum—separate from the way they consume content everywhere else. But just like that boy and his non-responsive book, they’re running into friction every time they encounter a wall of text, a dense document, or a never-ending email thread. Their instinct isn’t to adjust—it’s to disengage.

The question isn’t why don’t people read anymore? The question is why are we still communicating as if they do?

If we want people to absorb important information, we have to present it in a way that matches their instincts, their habits, and their expectations. The workplace isn’t immune to the digital shift—it’s just been slow to adapt.

That boy will grow up in a world where everything is designed to be swiped, tapped, and zoomed. The companies that survive the next era of communication will be the ones that understand this now—before their own employees, like that toddler, start looking at their internal messages and wondering: "What kind of defective system is this?"