Non-communicative Editors

I don't mind getting rejection slips. I really don't. Some of the greatest writers out there were rejected by dozens or even hundreds of publications (and went through as many revisions) before publishing their first work. What does bother me, though, is when editors don't write anything back to me. If I have gone to the trouble to write something, conform it to a particular publication's (often complex) style guidelines, and submitted it with a cheery note to the editor, the least that he or she could do is let me know the submission was received and let me know if and when it has been rejected. There's nothing worse than the silent treatment, not only because the suspense is terrible, but also because a writer can't in good conscience submit his or her work anywhere else until that rejection slip arrives in the mail. Editors may think they're saving writers' feelings by pretending not to have received their submissions rather than sending out rejection letters, but in fact this is a failure of nerve and extremely frustrating for me as a writer.