Hey
What’s up
Hi
Hello
Do you hate it when a colleague messages “hello” and then leaves you hanging while they type out the next thing they have to say? ME TOO. And we’re not alone.
Instead of silently building resentment, send them this link. You don’t even have to say anything, just hit ’em with the nohello.net and let the website do the rest. When they click, they’ll be greeted with this:
As we see from the screenshot, ‘hello’ isn’t the only obnoxious message. We also have:
“Hello, are you around?”
“hi sophie – quick question.”
“You got a sec?”
“yt?”
“ping”
etc.
Who tf types “ping”. I’d like to add “do you have time to talk?” to this list. JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT PLEASE MY ANXIETY CANNOT TAKE THE DO YOU HAVE TIME TO TALK. Sorry, that was a bit extra.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about being clinical and rude. It’s the opposite of rude really, it’s about being considerate of people’s time and attention and communicating as effectively as possible. You can still be polite, just do it in fewer individual messages.
If you want to be super passive-aggressive, you can even set your status as nohello.net.
Are we clear? Good.
Bye.
My general go to is “Hey – when you have the brainpower can I have 5 minutes to chat about X please?”
And I only send messages when I see they are marked as available (and occasionally offline), not when marked as Busy/DND.
A vote for “ping” or “…” – given the use of screen sharing over Zoom, it can be useful to give the recipient a chance to hide their chat window off screen share.
“we need to discuss Steve’s poor performance immediately”
*Steve is watching screen*
So I had something kinda like this happen. Big boss had his iMessage connected to the spare Mac in my office that my coworker sometimes used. Coworker motions me over one day because all these messages are popping up between my boss and big boss, my boss was talking MAD shit in texts about me, my coworker, pretty much everyone in the department. I didn’t stick around much longer after that.
100% This! Dealing with busy season burn out – waiting for them to type that whole message gave me so much anxiety.
If talking is faster than typing, and you’re in a big fucking hurry because you’re soooo busy, then why not just call the person you need to communicate with?
I know, I know…”Tell me you’re an old fart without telling me you’re an old fart.”