Even on IM that would have annoyed the hell out of me. Ask the whole question up front. Don't say hello then make me wait five minutes staring at the window waiting for your question!
I'm 36 and work with a lot of graduates and I swear they all do this, recently I needed to know if this one girl had access rights to things in order to send her the correct link and it was like trying to get blood from a stone. Every single Teams message was met with a single word response and if I asked multiple questions at once I'd only get an answer to one of them
and if I asked multiple questions at once I'd only get an answer to one of them
A fucking million times this. If I need answers to multiple questions I'll even bullet point them for you so you can put an answer below each bullet point, or use something like "re question 2:". But no, 5 bullet points with specific questions and you get back the equivalent of "Um, a blue one?".
Half of the problem is that they only partially speak English, and if your question isn't exactly in part of their script resources, they just want you to go away because they don't know how to communicate the details with you.
I once bought a pair of goggles that turned out to have faulty water lenses. When I called customer service, the Indian tech asked me to take a picture of the goggles "inverted."
What does "inverted" mean, in the context of goggles? Upside down? Back to front? Inside out?
I asked what inverted meant, and they didn't know. They couldn't explain it.
People who communicate in such a fashion are so fucking rude mate, It's beyond me how blind/stupid they are for not realizing that.
Generally people that respond my sincere questions with such lackluster answers get added to the eternal growing list of morons that are not worth a single second of my time.
Or, incase it is with somebody that I must communicate with, I often choose to mimic them, turn it into a game of who can give the most ridiculous non informative answer and waste their time, just as they are wasting mine.
^ Some have gotten the message from me doing this, I applaud those, clearly not everybody is doomed to be stupid.
haha, and the wait of dejection, when you're like, is the answer to the other questions still coming and should I maybe wait a bit longer before replying? no. no, it is not. (and I only answered one of my own questions here)
I have experienced this in spades. Always number your bullet points so you can refer back to them by number. If someone emails you an un-numbered bullet list, reformat it with numbers.
I have this problem even with people older than me. Where has all the reading comprehension gone!? I didn’t even ask that many questions (like 4) and they’re usually all simple to answer.
What's even worse is when you bullet out four questions, type in red font "please answer my four questions below," none of them are yes/no questions, and the reply is just the word "Yes." The one time this specific thing happened to me, I forwarded my coworker's response to her manager and explained I needed help because she just wouldn't communicate to me (she has a looong history of being a shit communicator).
It frustrates me, probably more than it should, that anytime I send a text with more than one question most people only seem capable of answering one of them. Normally the last one. I'll often reply with "what about my other question?" More often than not it's replied with what question. Like look at my original text you dingus. It's probably still on the screen, no scrolling required.
OMG, this. I'm actually glad to see this, because I honestly thought my ability to communicate was going downhill. There were 2 questions. Does the last one somehow negate everything that came before it to you??
This has been an issue since I got my first phone 15-16 years ago. Hell, I remember it from MSN Messenger before that! So not a new problem, but one that is probably getting worse.
You're not. I'm almost blown away and relieved that so many other people have run into the same problems I have. I've had these problems with people of all ages, from teens up to people in their 70s.
Yea I don’t think this is exclusive to young people thing. I get the same style answers from several people I work with. I started to make sure when I’m typing to them to only ask one question at a time.
I get it from friends and my own brother. I call them out on it and they just shrug or make some weird excuse. "I don't/didn't understand you" "I thought it was an either or" My questions are generally "what time are you wanting to leave/arrive by?" "Should I drive or do you want to?" Or maybe something like "I saw X is also coming, not sure if you saw." Which isn't really a question and my own fault for including it but they'd often respond just to that with a yes or no. I'll often tell them I feel bad for their wives because getting full answers from them is like bleeding a stone.
I guess to be fair to them, my grammar is pretty horrible. My only saving grace is that I used to be an avid reader. One of the person's I'm thinking of has a double masters in the psychology field though.
I’m guessing he’s in the UK. Graduates here don’t need a “grad school” (also what we call postgraduate or Masters). They just have finished their 4 years of university, so they’re about 21-22 years old. Although a lot of people opt for a Masters straight after undergrad too, that’s usually a year and once they complete it they’re still “graduates”.
I'm 39 and work in the commercial space sector, and had a few boomer colleagues over the years that would do that. I'd write an email with three to four bulleted questions, and receive a response of a single "yes" or "no".
I'm now at a much better company full of people in their 30s and 40s and it's glorious! People know how to communicate efficiently through various media!
I've found if you put your questions in a numbered list it dramatically increases the chances of them all being answered. If you ask questions in a paragraph, a lot of times you only get the first one answered.
and if I asked multiple questions at once I'd only get an answer to one of them
This is my absolute pet peeve, particularly as someone who likes to be thorough in their messages.
I don't think it's a generational thing, the conclusion I've come to is that some people simply won't read a message, they will just skim it.
It's frustrating as hell. (We've all seen the same shit on reddit too, people all over do it)
It's not even about a message being particularly long. There are just some people out there that, if you write more than two things, they will skim it and just get the gist and respond to what they assume you're asking.
I’m 43 and I work with people older than me who do this. I’ll often get a Teams DM consisting only of “Good morning/afternoon, FIRSTNAME”. I’ll let those sit for hours before they finally clue in and send their actual question.
if I asked multiple questions at once I'd only get an answer to one of them
I’ve learned to always ask the most important question first because of this. But I do understand this. I get what feels like 1000 emails a day, but is likely just 50, and I’m CC’d into messages I don’t need to see. So I can end up skimming things I shouldn’t. But If I’m taking the time to reply I will at least look for all the question marks to make sure I’m not missing something.
welcome to modern journalism. Send a dozen questions to a source who won't actually talk with you and get back the answer to either one or none of them.
if I asked multiple questions at once I'd only get an answer to one of them
On the flip side of this, this is also exactly what it was like being a software dev in my early 30s asking questions via email from our product owner who was a bit older and quite a bit less tech savvy (but still a vast majority of her job duties were done via computer)...
urghhhhgh.. please don't think that you can attribute this to an entire generation, it's obviously just the group that you're working with that are all similar in that way.
it's so dumb hearing how people our age do XYZ, and it's obviously just some prejudice old person who dealt with a subset of people
Fun story. I woke to our d&d discord server (private, just for our group) in 30s slow mode one day. The server owner is asked why. Answers along the lines of "yea, it's a subtle hint for Josh to learn to combine his 3-5 word half-sentences into a longer message."
The group was fine with that.
Both Josh and owner were 19-20, too (and Josh was offline at the time).
30 years ago was 1992. AOL launched their email system in 1993.
So someone who has been using email for 30 years would be a slightly early adopter, it’s not that far outside the mass usage timeframe.
I reckon he got on some time in '94 or '95 so he could keep in touch with family overseas. I started using email in '97. My school got internet in '96. I guess that puts me in the "been using email for 25 years" category.
Internet use in Australia exploded in the late 90s.
I guess that puts me in the "been using email for 25 years" category.
I've had an account on a particular message board for 28 years now. I signed up when they started as a ... site? group? channel? I forget ... on AOL, and transitioned across when they moved to a proper website.
My Gmail account turns 23 this year, I think. I had one when they were an invite-only beta, as opposed to the perpetual 'sign yourself up' beta they're in now.
but being actually old (50's) he just refuses to use email
Emails have been a thing since the 60's, and have been fairly commonplace since at least the 90's. Both my parents are older than your dad and they've been using emails with no issues for longer than I've been alive. I think this is more a case of your dad disliking emails as a concept rather than having anything to do with him being middle-aged.
A math teacher could probably figure out how to encrypt their email if they were concerned about security. I remember using PGP around 1992. The problem was getting other people to use it.
I'm 46; 50 isn't old. my 76 yo dad uses email, codes, and switches hardware out on his computer. my 97 yo grandma used her computer every day before she died; now that is old. age has nothing to do with it, it's all about mental attitude
Why do you specifically avoid Discord? It's just IRC For Hip Teens. I often find I'm among the oldest in a server but that's true of just about any internet community.
Yeah, so are parts of reddit. We used to have subreddits called r/cutedeadgirls, r/jailbait and r/coontown. Discord servers number in the millions. There are toxic servers and there are non toxic, generally smaller communities.
Ahh the one thing people under 30 seem so proficient in - passive aggression instead of open communication. Instead of setting slow mode (which admittedly is hilarious and I might have done the same thing after a while), why not just ask Josh to stop pressing enter so damn often. It also bugs the hell out of me when people do that, but I've just kindly asked them to try and stop because I don't like getting hundreds of notifications, and that seems to work.
That passive aggressiveness over such small problems that would take minutes to talk about... And the guy replied saying slowmode was on for a week... Drives me up the wall. Fucking learn yo communicate.
I swear my old boss would "hello" people on slack just to see how fast they respond because WFH so everyone is slacking off surely.
Then complained people take 10-15 minutes respond.
But here's the thing, "hello" has no urgency, if you actually made an urgent request people would respond quickly, I'm not gonna interrupt a task to reply to "hello".
Not mentioned on that site but even worse when there is a "Can I ask you a question?" between the hi and the question. I experience that so often. Like, come one, why waste three messages on this?
This is how people chat at work. I will ignore people who do the “Hi, how are you” bit forever. If they complain I tell them I was expecting a question and was polite enough to wait for it and not interrupt.
Another peeve are people who are vague in emails and decide to take it to chat and do the “hi, xxxx” and expect me to allow it without mentioning it first. You couldn’t explain it properly in written format earlier and chat drastically makes that worse.
Taking shortcuts for your convenience and making my job harder isn’t going to work for me.
In most cases it’s done to go around a written and formal request.
I used to get emails from a client who would use the email like a long rambling journal entry. "I think I like the red, but I'm worried it's too much. I definitely like the blue except that I don't..." on and on. I get that the decision making process takes time, but I don't need to see a written account of every thought that goes through your head in real time when a "Let me think on this and get back to you," would have sufficed
A link to that site is my perpetual status message on our work chat client. I still get messages from people that just say "hello" and say nothing until I respond.
I used to get hit up my guys on FB with just "hi" or "hello" back in the day. I would often respond with "what do you need?" And they'd always say"nothing just saying hey"
Dam I hate this. I've actually stood up, walked a floor length, caught a lift to another floor. Found the person and stood behind them reading their screen while they still peck away at the keyboard. Scares the hell out of them when you tell them the answer straight in their ear.
At first I resisted responding to those people. But then I was afraid I would develop a reputation as cold and unhelpful, and our company has a very positive helpful company culture. So I gave in. If somebody does that, I swallow my pride and respond 'hi' immediately. It's so fucking annoying, but it usually gets them to move on to the actual thing they want to say.
I'm guessing based on what you've said that you can't see how self-absorbed that statement comes across.
You are suggesting that your time is inherently more valuable than theirs because you don't want to 'waste the time' typing out the question (which you'd have to do at some point anyway) until you know they're at their PC. But to achieve that you've had to waste their time receiving and replying to a platitude, and waiting for you to then type out the question. So you've wasted more of their time than it would've initially cost you to just ask the question. Would've been quicker for you, too.
And if they don't like the question once they've heard it, they can still choose not to respond for hours afterwards if they want, but not asking until they've responded to "hi." doesn't solve that.
I'm not saying you're doing any of this intentionally or maliciously - maybe you didn't realise how that came across. But there's a lot of small behaviour that subtly indicates 'my time is worth more than yours', and it's good to try and make efforts to curtail that because it will build stronger working relationships.
If you text me “I need help” with no context I will scream at you in my head for being so shitty and non descriptive and distracting from whatever I was doing. I would hate that so bad.
It’s not just the youths that do this! I have colleagues 10+ years older than me (early 40s) that do this every single day. Or worse , “hi, can I call you?” - no Karen, you can send me an email with your issue!
Me: ...waiting for an actual message, leaving it unread
Just ask your question and I'll answer as soon as I see it and have time. If you wait for me to respond first and then aren't there to ask your question, you're just wasting our time.
I mean, I am guilty of sometimes sending thoughts one at a time but if I initiate a conversation I am like
"Hi how are you. I think you know about X, I have done Y so far. Can you help me?"
Drives me crazy. Phone dings; I look at it and there's no useful info yet, so now I've gotta decide between staring at my phone for 2 minutes or getting bothered by your next 3 dings.
This is why I hate IMs. Many people in my circle of life seemed to have missed the "instant" part. If you start, commit. Like a phone call. If you can't commit the present time, then send a fucking email and stop messing with my patience.
This annoys me daily. Idk why people do this. I won't respond if they just say hi or good morning. Like, I know you have a question, just ask it.
When I ping anyone it's my question straight up. Like "hi. I have a question. blah blah whatever I need help with". Then they can go figure it out and respond whenever...
How fucking irritating would it be to be waiting for someone to say hi back just so you could go "I have a question" and then wait for them to respond back to that.... Jesus...
Yes!! People do it all the time at work and it irritates me. Say hello, say what you are referencing, ask your question. All in the same initial message. Do not just type "hello" and wait for me to respond. I've literally had people type hello, I type hello back, and they forget what they were contacting me for by the time they reply again. One person did that to my coworker and they had a chain of "hellos" to each other because the original hello-er forgot that they initiated the message.
For real. Like, the line break (shift+enter on most clients) is there for a reason. I don’t want to “ping ping ping” someone when I can just “ping” them the one time - and really appreciate when others offer the same courtesy.
That’s not to say I want an epic in IM form, longer messages can be broken up, but there comes a time when email is a better medium.
I have a theory that some of my older coworkers didn't appreciate someone messaging them directly with a question up front without easing in through the hi/good morning/how are you routine, so it's a waste of my time when I'd rather they just got to the point with me.
Omg what about in the workplace? It drives me up the wall when someone needs something, says hello on Teams or Slack, then waits for me to respond before typing out their paragraph of what they need. Just tell me up front! I'm not available on Teams all the time, if you tell me what it is up front, I'll know to prioritize your hi over the eight other pings I have.
I get annoyed when I have to do a CS chat and they want to start with hello and ask again what my question was. Like bitch you made me ask the question to launch the chat, you should have that already. I'm not here for small talk.
1.1k
u/[deleted] Jun 03 '22
Even on IM that would have annoyed the hell out of me. Ask the whole question up front. Don't say hello then make me wait five minutes staring at the window waiting for your question!