I have a handy reply ready for those times: ‘No.’ The key, though, is really in the delivery. You gotta start typing, and just type ., backspace, ., backsapce, etc for a good 30 seconds, give them time to sweat a little, then you drop it on them. No preamble, no fucking about, just straight to the point with minimum effort. Proper capitalization and punctuation help deliver the point that this is a considered reply and not a half-assed ‘fuck off.’ Now they have to imagine that you spent 30 seconds typing and deleting numerous rants about their stupidity for even contacting you. And then you have to sell the delivery: no replies whatsoever until your next shift starts. It makes it clear that you weren’t fucking around, weren’t playing hard to get, weren’t just whining before you go do the thing, but that you are not and in fact never were going to do on your off-time whatever bullshit they were about to ask you to do, and it will reinforce the earlier point that they should feel bad for even asking.
Context can really freight a lot of meaning into two letters and a punctuation mark.
The notification sound on gchat or slack makes my eye twitch.
I don’t even reply to those.
Tell me what you want or I’m doing other work.
“I’ll be right there 1 min” and then I corner them at their desk until the thing they want makes sense.
Unless it’s my boss or someone I actually need to talk to I ignore them until they state their business. I have no time for rude mfers.
“Go ‘hey’ yourself, you rude motherfucker!”
I get irrationally angry at Teams “heys”. Goddammit state your piece and let me move on with my life.
“hi, can I ask you something?”
…
YOU ALREADY HAVE, JUST WRITE IT ALREADY
Omfg, why don’t people use multiple lines to formulate their statement?
I have to hear 10 pings before they are even midway through what they are saying.
Edit: to clarify - it’s not the pings (or any anger or annoyance toward those generally, it’s the purposeless emptiness of them, looking at then individually), it’s the short messages that I read and then have to wait for the next several to even get the picture (and in between returning to whatever I was working on before, several times).
Unfortunately shift + enter is too advanced so we get the AOL instant messenger experience.
I thought I was the only one being driven mad by this! It’s even better when the messages are all short so you hear multiple pings in rapid succession
You know it’s gonna get pingy before any substance can be compiled together when the first message is just ‘hi’, then 10+ seconds later the second line drops and it’s like 3 words, and still no subject in slight.
Muscle memory from when people get annoyed that I’m “taking too long”
Sometimes it’s appropriate to do many small messages as you’re writing up the full thing, other times it’s better to wall of text. It depends on the person and context imo
Yes, ofc, the nuances are part of the digital literacy (and I agree completely - if a convo is two-sided and active, ofc).
But in the initial message, ‘people don’t know’ how long you are writing it.
Also, just put your phone on vibrate or something, Jesus. Such a petty thing to care about.
It’s up there with caring about the color of your text bubble.
I have it muted, bit still get bubbles on my PC - it’s the fact that I get to read those bubbles & then have time to get back up my work two or three times before they get to their question or whatever.
How many times you get distracted during your work is important to basically all people, it’s just how our brain work (and how much the chemicals of managing such switches get to you in the long run).
I guess… It’s the same amount of words so I’m reading the same amount of text. So to me it’s the same level of distraction either way.
The same amount of text but not the same amount of time - waiting for the person to write it vs reading it all in one go.
Especially when the subject is complex (and/or you are busy), this is several minutes.
(The debate, Teams, is work environment.)
You can turn those pings off.
Lol, I know, I’m not bothered by them as such.
And I also want to respond to most people promptly.
But not sending a sensible coherent message as one message is just basic etiquette. One could choose to send emails (or even physical mail) line-by-line too, each line in a separate message.
Or even here - this reply could have been posted in 6 parts.
Oh lord the sins i commited like this as a junior
Even outside of work context I bloody hate “hey” texts… I have a friend that always does that (or some other variations with added “how’s it going” etc) and doesn’t start typing what he actually wanted to ask until I reply “hey” back… Then I’m just staring at the “typing…” for 5min…
Do some geek shit and automatically reply with https://www.nohello.com/ if they lead with a greeting and a pause for dramatic effect. I usually just wait for them to continue with what they actually need which solves the issue one way or another.
Omg blogger is still around ??
You can set a default status message in Teams that gets displayed right when someone tries to message you. That link is in mine. It doesn’t work for everyone, but for most.
This is so perfectly passive aggressive to me that I plan to set it up today. Genius.
I dont think this is passive agressive at all. The automatic reply would be, but as a status? No, this just communicates the way you want to be messaged
I wish my company could require that everyone read that page as training. Though, I do use this to tell who’s smarter/productive than others.
La di dah. Looks who is being smart and productive for the man.
I use my extra time to nap 😉 I’m not giving the man anything, don’t worry
Answer “hi” back, my job here is done, and ignore until next task I’m working on is complete. You’re on my schedule now buddy. Bonus points for answering out of their time zone’s working hours to see if the next day they start with Hey again.
Aha! This is the way.
I tend to reply with “Hi” at the end of my day when they’ve gone offline.
Tomorrow, I’ll either get the real question, or, it goes another day… they’ll learn… eventually
I never thought of that last part but I like it lol. I have a lot of international people who do this most and it would be perfect. Though some of them seem to wake up while I’m on, so this might backfire on me one day.
I currently just ignore these messages. Some never take the hint and keep trying.
A sys admins worst Monday morning.
