A colleague of mine works in a different department, to do with data. When I receive a query about data, I reply to the sender and say something like "I have copied in X as this is a data question and they are best placed to answer it". Then the colleague just replies only to me, saying "I don't know". No attempt to find out, no attempt to escalate it to their manager, and no attempt to copy in the sender of the question to say "I don't know but I'll find out and get back to you". It's so annoying
A slightly different form of that one used to annoy me..
Someone would approach me and ask (for instance)...'can you ask Dale blah blah'
In some circumstances, that's ok. But some people just use you as a conduit out of habit.
When I used to say...'you can ask him yourself, just send an email ?'
Ahhh well...blah blah would be the often used answer. In other words, they're just being lazy.
So I developed a tactics.. yeah, I'll ask him, then IF the subject got raised again id just say...havnt seen him, forgot to ask, etc etc etc, stonewall it.