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.
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.
This company desperately needs a ticketing system. I can’t imagine getting interrupted by some entitled asshole who doesn’t realize i don’t exist to serve only them.
To people like this, my existence begins and ends with their call, those kind of people get shit work done for them and everyone talks about them behind their back.
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:
Broken tech.
Software or systems insufficient to the need, which stand in the way of either operations or profit (usually both).
Directly involved with vendor or client ops, and needs to be fixed for operations to continue.
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.
This company desperately needs a ticketing system. I can’t imagine getting interrupted by some entitled asshole who doesn’t realize i don’t exist to serve only them.
To people like this, my existence begins and ends with their call, those kind of people get shit work done for them and everyone talks about them behind their back.
But what did you say in the first place? Did you state the problem? If not, “Slack” describes your brain.