>There is no good excuse for ignoring requests repeatedly besides laziness or self importance.

Not necessarily, there are also plenty of cases where a person's KPIs don't match their responsibilities or the actual needs of the team. This is frequently a management problem where resources haven't been properly assigned and the employee will always prioritize what they are evaluated on to minimize friction. Far too often managers collect responsibilities for their team (or are told to take on something), yet have zero plans other than "it will work itself out" and they don't bother to formalize how the requests will be dealt with.

There are certainly a lot of people out there that refuse to do their jobs, but it is common enough that there is something else wrong that a discussion with the manager about where the process is failing is the first step.