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No Hello

nohello.net

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Re: No Hello

#41

Post by pards »

emblaegh wrote: post #5

My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.

I have several responses depending on how ornery I'm feeling

    1. Respond with, "Hello. How can I help?", or
    2. Wait until 5:30pm then respond, "Hello" and close my laptop for the day

Re: No Hello

#43

Post by hombre_fatal »

emblaegh wrote: post #5

My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.

I don't get what this achieves since the whole reason they sent you "hello" is that they want a TCP handshake before they get on with it. So sending hello back just acks the message and they will proceed which is what they wanted.

The annoyance in TFA is that you have to do the handshake at all.

Re: No Hello

#44

Post by xattt »

agentultra wrote: post #39

No hello but time for goodbye? /s I get it. It’s the same on IRC when people ask if they can ask a question. Just ask the bloody question!

When I’m in a Smart Alec mood, I’ll usually respond “you already did” if they ask if they can ask a question.

Re: No Hello

#46

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

emblaegh wrote: post #5

My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.

I’ll do the same - when I get around to it, which might be an hour or two after it was sent.

If the person on the other end then decides to draw out the small talk with “how are you” etc, it might take a few days for them to get an answer to their actual question, but that’s on them, it doesn’t bother me. I get to messages when I get to them. If they aren’t of substance I don’t care.

Re: No Hello

#48

Post by bonoboTP »

nkrisc wrote: post #25
bonoboTP wrote: post #16

I see this more often when someone desires synchronous, multi-turn interaction, not simply "when is that thing starting again?". Things where they aren't exactly sure how to ask the question so they want to rely on you asking questions back and then together zeroing in on the solution of some issue.

Sure, but it’s still silly. “Hey, I’m having some trouble figuring this thing out, here’s where I’m confused: … . It’s absurd to expect someone to play 20 questions with you to figure out what your problem is.

They probably need handholding to go through the issue and aren't good at putting into words explicitly what their issue is. Especially nontechnical and nonprogrammer people have problems around structuring and breaking down an issue into explicit parts, with a clearly formulated goal and required inputs and expected outputs etc. Most people's problem-solving relies on a collaborative thinking process where short sentences are exchanged and you rely on the other person actively steering as well, not like an empty chat box.

I don't tend to see this "hello" issue with people who are competent in programming or troubleshooting things themselves.

Re: No Hello

#49

Post by macintux »

4pkjai wrote: post #9
emblaegh wrote: post #5

My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.

When people give me a hello back I raise them a “how are you?”

It took me a depressingly long time to figure out that when people (offline) ask me how I am, they don’t expect, or want, an answer.

Re: No Hello

#50

Post by macintux »

superpope99 wrote: post #28

counterpoint - Sometimes I do this for myself to prompt myself into a reply when I'm finding it hard to compose the message. Once I've said something, no matter how small, I know I have to follow up within in a couple of minutes. It's like a kind of short-term Ulysses pact. Also I'd say this depends on your existing work culture - I've been in places where the expectation is that everyone has Slack messages muted. If…

If people who say “Hello” would follow up with the question in a couple of minutes, I wouldn’t care. They don’t.
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