No Hello
No Hello
My work did a digital communication class that talked about how you should never start a chat with a question but rather start with "Hello'. It's infuriating
I mean, as long as you follow it up with whatever you want
Not until the other person responses. Which is insane.
Next communication rule: Start every question with "May I ask a question?" before asking the relevant question after the acknowledgment.
Or in verbal discussions, never think before you speak and to avoid anyone else speaking make a humming noise with slightly opened mouth emitting an "Uhhhmmmmmm" while you think.
I love when a website on mobile has some animated component that keeps making the text move around while I’m trying to read the damn thing.
I agree very much, major pet peeves in a busy day
There's one guy at work who calls unprompted. If I don't answer, he messages me asking to call him back.
I don't call him back anymore. I can't know if it's going to be a 5-minute call or a 45-minute call so I assume the latter and I don't have time for that
You can choose to answer the call or not, and the person calling should be okay with that. If they want you to call back they should tell what it’s about.
But getting mad at people for not asking to call as a blanket response is madness. (I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, BTW.) Sometimes you can solve things with synchronous communication much faster than you could messaging.
You can choose to answer the call or not
.. and either way, my concentration is broken for (what researchers keep saying) is 30+ minutes.
Nah. I'm not in the mood to speak to THAT asshole after he wrecked my morning.
In the middle of a text chat, you say "call me and share your screen" and then we 'go voice'. Calling without warning, now, and without justification (visible flames or blood, timely health risks, massive outages), is like dropping by your cousin's out out of the blue for a week.
I think straight calling someone on a chat program is rude because it unnecessarily breaks flow. I have to connect my Bluetooth headphones so I can hear you from the start, but that takes a couple seconds. If I'm not quick you'll stop calling before I'm ready, and it happens frighteningly often that people don't answer when calling back immediately, so you'll break my flow a second time.
Usually, 15-30 seconds are enough for me to mentally "put away" whatever I'm working on, which allows me to quickly resume once we're done. Often I write a comment describing what my last thoughts were. That can sometimes save a good 5 minutes or more.
At worst I'll say "give me 5 minutes" or "if not important, does 14:30 work?", but that's because I'm deep in thought and it will take a long time to get back to where I am.
I didn't say I get mad that he calls without asking. My comment was about the "please call me back" - that message could have been the question. It's the same as "hi"
Does anyone mind if I ask what this is in reference to
Work communication etiquette
Same as "don't ask if you can ask a question, just ask directly"
Is this website assuming you take 5 minutes to type 7 words and that typing "hi" takes the same time?
It's a common Indian thing to type a greeting, then wait for a response before actually getting to the point. It drives a lot of people crazy, because now we have to respond back and prompt them to tell us what they need and wait for a response, which is frequently a while later, causing a lot of interruption to what might otherwise be productive working time.
It turns a "can you send me this info" 5 minute task into a multiple interruption pain in the ass
Holy shit this is amazing.
I'm a member of a Discord server that's primarily used for support, and this happens way too often. I've taken to just reacting with a wave emoji and waiting for them to actually ask for help. Most of the time they'll just leave some time later, without ever asking a question.
In that case, as has been the case in other large discord servers I've been a part of, those are actually bots
This was my teams status for a couple years at my old job. I'll probably end up doing the same at my new job once I'm here long enough for it not to come off as an "overly aggressive new guy" move.
This is how I learned about this site and one of my team has it as his status after I told him about it. Which is kinda annoying as it's always there in group chats. I have taken to just ignore hi and wait till I get an actual question
I was delighted to see the "don't be mad at the person who sent you here" link at the bottom was sent to a different and appropriate video in the Spanish version of the site. That's great localization work.
Edit: it appears only Spanish and Swedish have unique videos
Hello.
I am now mad at you. /s
This is fair, though the reason we do it is to make sure the other person is okay enough to answer the question or talk about the thing first and if not we would want to help them out or take that into consideration.
Just asking the question feels rude or dismissive if they aren't doing well.
This varies a lot by culture, though. If you ask a North American how they are, you've basically said "hi". If you ask a Norwegian the same, you've asked a personal, private question. You might get an answer if you already know them privately; we might think you're prying into something that's neither your nor the workplace's business if you don't. Keeping professional is polite, prying is rude.
Sure, context and culture matter. Thanks for pointing this out!
...so do both?
"Hi, coworker! How's your day? Anyway bossman is on me about the TPS reports, are those going to be done today?"
See? You were polite, checked in on them, AND got to the point all at once!
I'll think about it. Thank you so much for the suggestion though!
Well by including the hi they have to provide a response rather than put it on hold for a few hours.
Isn’t this very context dependent?
For a small question it makes the most sense to just ask but often in work question can be much more complex. And the pre question or hello is pretty much: “Do you have a few minutes of time to read about and discuss this issue”
I have a colleague who just drops a wall of text on me. With varying levels of work-related/importancy and i find it very annoying depending on what i am doing.
Also if i contact someone who i know is very busy id like to know if they have time available to chat or call about x.
I am neurodivergent though, i am used to bigger chats because i hate calling and phone calls without heads up really bother me. It seems so pretentious to just on a whim go “STOP WHAT YOUR DOING AND HEAR ME”
It's fine if your actually mention what you want to talk about
But just "hi" is terrible
If you need a few minutes or a one on one then that is the question and it's perfectly fine to ask for it. "Hey, I need help with X, can you assist me? when would it be a good time to call each other for a couple of minutes or have a long real time chat?" There, now the person has the power to say no, thus it is not imposing on their time anymore and you have used the strength of text chat to it's full extend.
Hello does not imply any of that, quite the opposite, hello incites anxiety and ambiguity on most people precisely because you don't know if this will be a short fired one off question, a friendly salutation, or a long technical problem solving convo.
For what is worth, I'm neurotypical and absolutely hate massive group chats. Can't tolerate stream chats, despise discord with a passion, avoid slack and team's group chat like the plague. Most of my coworkers think the same, we call all of those the productivity theater. They exist to massage management egos into thinking they are providing value to a team by performing public assistance scenes to project a productivity that is not actually happening. Actual productivity occurs when fulfilling solo task or very tight group tasks of two or three people max. But management likes to see the monkeys dance.