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Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

nohello.com

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Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#61

Post by michaelt »

It depends on the nature of your work.

In some types of work, individuals are supposed to do their own time management, and carve out chunks of time for activities that require sustained concentration, and respond appropriately to occasional requests, which are a mixture of low- and high-urgency. For example, someone who needs to read complex academic papers, but occasionally might be interrupted for an urgent production incident. For them, time management is all about avoiding distractions - like synchronous conversations about trivial matters when they're supposed to be working.

Other areas of work have far less need for uninterrupted blocks of time. A manager doesn't just change tasks every hour, they often also respond to e-mails and chat messages during meetings. For them, time management is all about choosing between overlapping meetings, and managing the length of their queue of work by rejecting and delegating tasks. And of course talking to people is the core of their job.

For the former, sending a 'hi' message without the context needed for them to triage it into urgent or non-urgent means they're interrupted twice instead of once - which is pretty inconvenient.

For the latter, though? A dozen interruptions per hour is completely normal, what's the problem?

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#62

Post by CipherThrowaway »

Chris2048 wrote: post #7

The other person isn't necessarily waiting for the response. At the least, its a communication that you are about to ask them something, i.e. check back here in the next minute or so while I type out my question. Also, "Hi" is a good way of finding out if a person is present, sometimes you might ask to call them instead of typing your question. It also might be the case there are multiple people who can answer the qu…

> At the least, its a communication that you are about to ask them something, i.e. check back here in the next minute or so while I type out my question.

This is part of what makes it such poor etiquette. You've created this ambiguous, open-ended distraction for the other person. You expect them to divert focus away from what they're doing so they can poll the chat channel waiting for you to get your thoughts in order.

At least include some context so they have a better idea of what you're about to ask.

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#64

Post by CipherThrowaway »

Chris2048 wrote: post #35
nkrisc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can achieve exactly the same thing by just sending whatever message you were going to send anyway.

But I might not send it anyway, that's the issue.

That's even worse. You're sending out rounds of "Hi's" to multiple people, distracting them to prepare them for a question you might not even ask?

Candidly, you sound like an incredibly selfish communicator.

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#65

Post by reportgunner »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #23

I think it's a South African thing, but just about any call I receive from a number I wouldn't be expected to recognize, be it from cold calling spammers or legit service providers, starts with "Hello, how are you?" to which I respond with "Sorry, do I know you?". I wish call centres and companies would explain to their agents that it's not like approaching a customer who has walked into a physical shop where the cus…

By an insincere "how are you" they are extracting information on your current mood to engineer a proper communication protocol that is required to extract as much value for their personal objective as possible. I'm not disagreeing with you, just explaining their motivations to do it.

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#66

Post by d1sxeyes »

smeej wrote: post #42
ano-ther wrote: post #21

I think the problem is that the receiver wants to be polite and answer. And the sender wants to be polite and not interrupt[1]. So the extended etiquette is: if you don’t have time, it’s ok to not reply. [1] There’s also the concern that your message appears on someone’s shared screen during a video call.

Person sharing the screen is 100% responsible for making sure such notifications are turned off, not the other person sending the message.

While that is true, nevertheless it’s nice to consider that people are human and make mistakes.

It can be quite difficult to ‘correct’ that mistake once made, as in order to disable notifications, you often need to open up the chat app itself, which makes all of your conversations flash up on the screen.

Yes, of course you can always just stop sharing, disable notifications, and re-enable, but nevertheless, I always try to actually do the opposite, and send ‘hi’ and then the a follow up message for exactly this reason if I’m sending anything that is confidential or contentious. The difference is that I write the full message first (ctrl + a, ctrl + x, ‘hi’, enter, ctrl + v, enter), so that there’s essentially no delay between ‘hi’ and the content of my message.

You never know.

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#67

Post by ano-ther »

smeej wrote: post #42
ano-ther wrote: post #21

I think the problem is that the receiver wants to be polite and answer. And the sender wants to be polite and not interrupt[1]. So the extended etiquette is: if you don’t have time, it’s ok to not reply. [1] There’s also the concern that your message appears on someone’s shared screen during a video call.

Person sharing the screen is 100% responsible for making sure such notifications are turned off, not the other person sending the message.

Fully agree. But the insensible default on most programs is “all notifications on all the time” and there are users who don’t know how to change it.

Just had my message barge into an important presentation last week because the presenter got a new computer with the defaults on.

Re: Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat

#70

Post by shoo »

throwaway598 wrote: post #4

> It's as if you called someone on the phone and said "Hi!" and then put them on hold! Typically you both say a greeting then a conversation starts. > Instead of being polite, you are just making the other person wait for you to phrase your question, which is lost productivity. Please don't count every second of your life in productivity lost to someone else. The root of the problem might be frustration with not gett…

> It's as if you called someone on the phone and said "Hi!" and then put them on hold!

I called an australian government phone line recently, i was queued, then informed i could press 1 to register for a callback. I pressed 1. Then I was prompted to say my name, I did that. Then I hung up.

Some time later, I was indeed called back - by a robot. The robot greeted me, informed me it was calling back, and requested that I pass the phone to . The robot then queued me and prompted me to press 1 when was on the line. Since that was me, I pressed 1. After a bit more time being queued, I was transferred to a human operator.

edit: this seems quite bemusing / irritating, but to give the designer of this callback mechanism a little more credit, it was a phone line that businesses would call -- it would not be uncommon for person A to call from a business phone line, with the callback to the company line being answered by some other person B.

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