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.
Nah, that just makes you seem unreliable, even uncontactable should there be an emergency. You want to respond, but you want to do so in a way that nips this sort of thing in the bud.
Depends on the company/team culture, I guess. Where I work, email is used for things that are important/formal but not urgent, Teams is used for things that aren’t especially urgent or important, and video calls are used for things that are urgent (followed up by an email if it’s also important).
It’s considered rude to expect an immediate response to a Teams message, on my team.
Yeah, it’s definitely a culture thing. I developed this habit because I worked for a company that expected everyone to be responsive to text messages during the entirety of normal waking hours, and they abused the shit out of it, and I had enough.
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.
Or just leave the message unread until your next shift?
No.
Nah, that just makes you seem unreliable, even uncontactable should there be an emergency. You want to respond, but you want to do so in a way that nips this sort of thing in the bud.
Depends on the company/team culture, I guess. Where I work, email is used for things that are important/formal but not urgent, Teams is used for things that aren’t especially urgent or important, and video calls are used for things that are urgent (followed up by an email if it’s also important).
It’s considered rude to expect an immediate response to a Teams message, on my team.
Yeah, it’s definitely a culture thing. I developed this habit because I worked for a company that expected everyone to be responsive to text messages during the entirety of normal waking hours, and they abused the shit out of it, and I had enough.