To really dislike people putting read receipts on work emails

if you have to corral a load of seriously busy people into agreeing anything it must be a nightmare dealing with all you who dont want reminders/reading tags put onto emails. And saying xyz person hasnt responded to my emails wouldnt have held much water in the organisation i worked in...sorry held a big campaign up because i havent heard back from someone Would have just caused a lot of unnecessary stress....though clearly not so much to the recipient

I disable read receipts on every system I have to use. Google "disable read receipts" for whichever mail client you use.

And sending a read receipt doesn't mean the sender expects the email to be dealt with straight away, it just means the sender can stop worrying whether their email has been seen by the recipient.

I only use read receipts when emailing someone who has a track record of ignoring emails and when it could come down on my head if something isn't done (because the email is not responded to). I'm not paid enough to carry the can for someone else's slackness, that's on them.

Really annoys me too - I always decline and then take my time in responding as the email is pushed right down to the bottom of my priority queue

Has the opposite effect on me.

I work part time, so on my first day in, have a lot of e-mails to read.
I tend to skim through so can delete those "send to all" ones you don't need, and reply very quickly to those that just need s simple one line reply. Then mark unread those I need to spend more time on.
Same with if I am glancing through when I know I have 10 mins before my next meeting.
Anything with a 'read receipt' request doesn't get opened in that first initial run through. It automatically goes to the end of that first session, as I don't want to give the impression I am dealing with their query when I might not be.
So putting that read receipt on has the opposite effect.

I have only ever used it when there has been a history of someone telling me they 'hadn't received' something, or that I didn't send them information, which has only ever been one person I dealt with in the last 15 years or so.

It makes me irrationally angry when I see one, I tick "do not send" whilst making a long multi word swear about them in my head. One day, I dream, I will send the swear to someone. A terminal move, but oh how satisfying.

Gwenhwyfar - fair enough. I have to say I find it very passively aggressive. Like a sneakier version of high priority, but from a more junior member of staff. It's project manager behaviour. I'm making sure you know I know you got your email.

Well NSS of course I've got your internal email. That's how email works. I'm still not going to do my actions until my clinical priorities are sorted and safe. And as I have a reputation for doing what I say I'm going to do, I don't need chasing because someone else's manager is on their back.

A (relatively minor) part of my job is to tell defaulting commercial customers to pay up within so many days or we will start legal proceedings against them.

Some documents go by post, but I will also send them to the email address we have for their accounts department, and I want to know whether they've taken the trouble to open the email or not.

I always tick yes, I've read it and wait at least 3 days to respond.

I don’t like them either. There’s something implied about the professionalism of the recipient when someone is effectively saying ‘I have had to check that you have read this, and when.’

It's got nothing to do with priorities. That would be making it as urgent or high priority.

The read receipt is to check that the person has been made aware.

It's actually quite mean to refuse to give a read receipt for important information. it leaves the sender having to keep emailing you until they get a reply or having to call you.

It's not to get an instant response. It's to cover themselves like sending a registered letter. I sometimes have to be able to prove that I informed somebody of something. If I don't get a read receipt I may have to spend a whole day calling them and calling again and again if there's no reply and no opportunity to leave a voicemail.

IME the only people who do it are the ones who think their request/email is v. important. It's never the people who actually are sending important emails who do it.

I tick the box to confirm I've read it...but I usually don't reply for a few days - mostly because, as I said, their emails are never urgent or important.

I’ve also set up a rule to delete the “urgent” flag!

That one sends me into an instant rage. The sender has no idea what is on my to do list. I will decide if it is urgent or not. If it genuinely is urgent pick up the phone and talk to me!!

It's so 1999

I am too long in the tooth not to trust other professionals, paeticularly where organisational politics abound!

I’ve got a manager 2 steps above me who puts them on and expects immediate action. He’s a bit of a cock, plays lots of power games. Tedious individual who brings very little to the table.

Anyway. I always switch off the read response and he brought me up on it once. I said oh did I? I don’t remember, I tend to just automatically click no to things popping up on my screen when I’m busy. Was it urgent?

It wasn’t urgent of course, they never are, and I got it done in good time. He still sends with read receipts and I still switch them off every time. We are at an impasse with it and I am of course devastated.

On the rare occasion that I get one, I switch it off so they don't get a read receipt. None of their business when or if I read their email.

Sure thing. I've never sent one either, but I've received them and I've never assumed it was an aggressive act. It may have been, of course, but my assumption is that they just want to know, and perhaps they're really eager about that. And I can let them know, or not, and I can acknowledge I've received it and then leave my actual response until I'm ready. I don't feel like I'm being made to hurry or anything. Other alternatives to aggressiveness, in my mind, is that they might be anxious, might be a way some folks organise their correspondence, might be because they want to flag up that they think this is an important email, could be some kind of KPI thing where it's used as evidence to prove that a thing has been communicated. Now, even if it was actually an aggressive act... it's still just email, so I'd call it something else, maybe "forthright", confident or bold, in a way that very mildly irks me but ultimately causes no harm. And then of course it can be aggressive. Just because I can't imagine it and don't think I've experienced it, doesn't mean it can't happen.

My issue with read receipts is that they pop up before you actually get a chance to read the email. So I can't send to say I've read it as there's this pop up asking for a response and blocking me from reading the email it wants me to confirm I've read!

It's rude and aggressive. I decide my priorities thanks. Not you dickwad.

And funnily enough allowing you to update your gant chart isn't very high up.

I think you find it annoying because you are competent and efficient in your job. However you would be amazed at the amount of people who are not!

In a previous role (highly qualified professionals) many were making a basic mistake that cost the company ££ daily. I sent out comms about it, created a guide, demo video and posted it on the intranet. It had little to mo impact. I was then asked by senior mgt to directly email the “offenders”. I did. They continued to make the mistake. Mgrs pulled them up. They claimed they didn’t see the intranet post, global email or directed email. I was then asked by senior mgt to send to individuals again with a read receipt.

It then actually have an impact and the number of repeat offenders dwindled as they knew they had no excuse!