Sorry but no. If it’s asynchronous and I don’t need a response in a short time, I’ll email you. If I say something on Slack to a person, and don’t get a response in a short timeframe (~5 minutes), I go to someone else - whether that’s a coworker or a manager. And when I get told, “you’ll have to ask [unresponsive]”, I say, “Oh, I tried to reach out to them, they didn’t respond. Can you reach out and see if they’re available?”
That way, I’ve gotten somewhere closer to my answer, and I’ve put another person on the scent of the unresponsive one.
Don’t expect people to make themselves available to you without telling them what for. “I reached out” is a shitty phrase for “I expected them to drop everything but I didn’t explain why or what the problem is and for some reason I’m blaming them for no progress happening. I tried prodding my colleagues silently with literally no information whatsoever and now I’m all out of options. Please can management intervene, because telling my colleagues absolutely nothing about what needs to be done isn’t working - for some reason they’re not doing anything. I act like my urgent work problem is utterly meaningless content-free chit-chat and then get butthurt when people don’t respond to it. Management needs to make sure all my colleagues always drop everything for me instantly on my say so without hesitation or any context because otherwise they’re unhelpful. Please tell my colleagues that ‘hi’ from me means it’s AN EMERGENCY WHICH MUST BE HANDLED IMMEDIATELY.”
You sound like an awful person to work with. I’m not gonna break my focus and check the chat every 5 minutes so that I can serve your majesty’s questions.
Anything that I care about enough for that is related to one of four things:
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Broken tech.
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Software or systems insufficient to the need, which stand in the way of either operations or profit (usually both).
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Directly involved with vendor or client ops, and needs to be fixed for operations to continue.
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Billing problems for clients or vendors which I cannot resolve on my own.
Everything else, I can send an email or ask in a channel, rather than a private IM.
How on earth are your colleagues supposed to know this from “hi”?! If there really is an urgent problem, actually say what it is. Why do you expect all your colleagues to deduce that ‘hi’ means “production is currently shut down, please help immediately”?
DON’T just say hi. Say what the problem is. Just saying ‘hi’ shows no respect whatsoever for your colleagues’ time management.
These are not simple questions but high severity issues that need to be dealt with in a short timeframe. Slack doesn’t seem like the right tool here, a dedicated process would work much better (like an incident system).
That being said, the point here is to include enough context in your initial message so that the other person can start thinking about it as soon as they see it, instead of having to wait for you to type it out.
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But what did you say in the first place? Did you state the problem? If not, “Slack” describes your brain.
I do that with my friends out of habit sometimes
Just reply “hi” then set your status to away and go grab a coffee!
Just saying “Hi” back five minutes later already throws them off and they’ll come back to you the next day.
Oh yeah. Never say “hi” back right away! Always wait at least 5 minutes!
This is a hill I will die on with you. I’ve even sent the “no hello” link to a particularly egregious offender.
We had a communication training at my work that told us to always start with a Hi before asking the question on teams. It was infuriating
Read it, do not reply
I don’t answer “Hi” anymore.
If they need help they’ll ask what they need.
I have some people that my entire message history is “Hi” and no answer. Because they eventually realize they should ask in our QA channel instead of dm’ing our team members.
Someone sending just “hi” in a work IM is equivalent to no message being sent at all.
I will respond when I actually receive a message
It’s a handshake. If you’re out of the office or otherwise can’t respond, it saves them from typing the whole message, they can do it only if they know you’re responding.
It’s still offloading the inconvenience to you a bit, but at least it’s rational for themIf I’m out of office they can still type the message and I’ll see it later. If they can’t wait and would send it to someone else if I don’t immediately respond to the “hi”, then they could either copy-paste it, or - even better - send it to some relevant channel that contains multiple people capable of assisting them instead of PMing it to me.
Hi
There is literally a feature to see if someone is out of office or not.
And even if that is set wrong, they can copy and paste the same question to someone else if you don’t respond. Doesn’t take any extra work.
I just emote wave in response.
Hey, you got a sec?
Actually, I’m on the loo, so if you mean a second for a yes/no question with no follow up whatsoever, fire away, but if you’re looking for some interactive process, absolutely not, my turd takes priority.
No, sorry
The last time it happened to me I replied, but I waited until the end of the next day and shut down my laptop and put my phone away immediately after clicking send.
Hi, how are you?
Oh shit, this is going to be painful.
As long as it’s just an “hi” you don’t know what it is and have to assume it’s super urgent. Once you answer, they can disclose the actual matter in its full mundanity, resting assured they have already confirmed your attention.
I just don’t answer, lol
