Culture shock or toxic culture?

[Vinia]

I am a female with ADHD. I am high functional and self-aware. There are occasions where you may see my ADHD traits if you know what you are looking for. I work in finance and I am more than qualified with the relevant work experience. I also ran my own consultancy for a while.

I wanted to get into a niche industry and a position came through as Finance Manager. It was the company's first hire and number 1 in finance. I don't know how I ended up making this assumption but I assumed that it was a leadership position despite the job title. If you ask why, it's because Finance job titles are often wrong. I just saw number 1 in finance and ran with it.

I started the job and my role reports to an Operations leader. The business immediately stopped some additional finance support that they were getting so I ended up having to pick up some bookkeeping work as well.

In my first week, there is a major issue in finance that was caused by my predecessor. The Commercial leader says to me "YOU have changed something, because this is wrong. Oh never mind. I will ask the bookkeeper to check your work."

About 6 weeks into my job I need to check something with the Marketing leader. I sent a message "Hello Jo, how are you?". I have throughout my career always used this. The answer is usually something casual then getting into business. This time, Marketing leader says to me "Can you please not message me like this? Please write the whole context of your interaction in the first message."

I hate my job and I don't know what to do.

I don’t think you did anything wrong with your message. But some people don’t like getting vague initial messages. They like to know what’s going on there and then. Not everyone will be upfront about that.

Was it an email or a text message? If it was an email I’d find it weird (asking how someone is with no other content), if it was a text that would be ok.

I really hate when people message me “hi” and if they’re not my manager I will reply simply with “how can I help you”. Not giving me the full context means I have to stop what I’m doing and ask you to tell me what it is so I can then prioritise it. Whereas if I get the whole message I can decide instantly.

I hate vague opening messages.
Hate them.
I'm tempted to ignore them, or respond like your Ops Director did.

But instead, I respond with something like: Great thanks, how can I help?

Learning: sure, you can start with a 'how are you' but include the rest of the context so a busy recipient knows how to prioritise their time.

It is an internal messaging system. It's like WhatsApp on a computer. So if you need something quick that you would usually speak to someone about, it's what remote workers use.

The commercial leader was rude.

The request to have a point to your message was fine- not everyone communicates the same way.

I don't really understand why two minor interactions would indicate a toxic culture or make you miserable?

I don't get why your ADHD makes any difference?

Is it simply that the job doesn't have the responsibility you wanted? If so, start looking and move on when you find a better post. It's still experience in the area you want.

I agree with this!

Where I work, there was even an internal communication a few months ago saying the same - just writing “hello” messages is a waste of time, and is rude because it places unnecessary demands on the receiver. Just give some kind of context!

I go a step further, and if I can see on the preview that the message has no actual substance, I just ignore it for quite a while, before eventually replying 😅

Definitely send the whole message in one go, if feasible. You can just pop the niceties at the start.

In terms of the job itself, it's hard to say. So many places are chaotic and badly managed. Have you done a pros and cons list?

It's common to request nohello at many workplaces that use internal messaging. She probably assumed you knew about this so didn't send you the website. https://nohello.net/en/

TBH she sounds a bit stern but I absolutely hate getting messages like that, too. If people are super busy then it is much better to get the entire message/request rather than the frustrating 'how are you' precursor when we all know you're waiting to ask something. It's work, just ask!

I would treat it as learning someone's preferred working style before writing the job off.

Her response was brusque but that’s the bugger with emails. Just try to read it neutrally and see it as a request, not a telling off.

See how the job goes in general, maybe the culture isn’t for you.

FWIW, I think a friendly opening and sign off is courteous, lots of people do.

OP, you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. You now say that you hate your job. Because of this email response?
You sound like a 12 yo, sorry to say that.

Don't over think it and dramatise. Just do what is prudent to do and emailing professionally rather than chit-chat is the prudent thing to do.

Wish you well ! 🙂

I absolutely hate getting a message on Teams from someone with just a greeting. I want to know what the person wants so I can prioritise my time.

I think the person was blunt with how they phrased it but really it is best to say 'Hi, how are you? I need some info about XYZ....etc. Thanks.' You absolutely don't need the pleasantries first in a separate message.

I don’t think it’s either. If, in six weeks in a new job, you’ve received two pieces of challenging feedback – one just being specifically about somebody else’s personal communication preferences, which could be due to their own neurodiversity, rather than your performance itself – you’re doing pretty well. At some level, and particularly when you’re senior, you have to be able to separate / compartmentalise feedback on your operational role and feedback on your person, and not let the latter bother you where it can simply be ascribed to different styles and personalities rubbing up against each other.

Have you considered some professional coaching? You’re presumably now the equivalent of a Finance Director: that means you take full ownership of your section, and are able to robustly defend your position and have credible responses to challenge. It sounds a bit as though you just sat there like a lemon whilst your colleague attributed the errors to you – rather than respond that you’d identified where the errors originated and the impact they’d had on XYZ process, but now that you understood the issue you’d done ABC to remedy it and those changes would be reflected in the next set of data. Meanwhile, please refer to these manually manipulated calcs your team had produced to mitigate out the flawed data. Or whatever.

That email would annoy me.

I'm old enough that I remember when I email first came into my workplace (1990 or thereabouts). Before then most inter office communication was by phone and we wasted so much time on small talk and chit chat before getting down to business. The absolute joy of being able to cut all that crap out and just send a 3 sentence message `'Hi Jo, could you send me X. I'll need it for Tuesday. Thanks a lot'. I can remember coming home and raving to DH about how amazing it was. He was sceptical and thought it would never catch on.

I think posters are being a bit ott. Fine to find a "hello" message irritating but it's personal preference/individual workplace norms - everywhere ive worked the excessively brusque "don't message me that way again" would be seen as significantly ruder and out of step with the office culture/rules than your initial error.

At most your message was mildly annoying but unintentional whereas hers was rude and deliberately meant to be so. She could have just as easily answered your question but added "oh next time can you just put your whole message in at once please, I get distracted with random "hellos" and forget to answer. Thanks 😊"

I wouldn't write it off yet op but i think it's a fair enough question to consider that if enough people in an organisation aren't particularly nice (or just unluckily the ones you work closely with), if it's somewhere you want to stay long term. Obviously that's not the same as quitting because of one arsey message but the cultural/social "fit" of a workplace and its values can be as important as pay, benefits, etc.

If you sent me an initial message like that I would delete and ignore

You're not my friend you're my colleague. If you have something to discuss summarise it in an email (bullet points are good). I don't need wishy-washy, meaninglessness chat first I have a huge to do list and you're wasting my time.

I have a colleague who prefaces everything with hello how are you?
How I am is utterly irrelevant and I'd rather she just said "hi, can you help with.." and just get on with asking the question without the awkward dancing around getting to the point.

I've never told her to stop it though, as I appreciate that it would come across as churlish, so I am just inwardly churlish about it!

As someone with ADHD, I want to point out a common symptom is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder. Among other things, RSD means you can take things personally when they may not be meant that way. I would have been upset by that feedback as well, OP. Unclear job role definitions are also not helpful.

Is your workplace aware of your ADHD? I have just recently had an appointment with occupational health. The doctor will talk to you about how it affects you and your work, and recommend to your employer the best ways to work with you and provide support. You can request to see the report before your employer does as well.

Regarding the issue in your first week, it does sound rude to accuse you of causing an issue - was it in public or just a conversation between the two of you? If you were aware at the time that the problem had been caused by your predecessor, were you able to explain that?

Regarding the message you sent, I agree that just sending the first line of the message is annoying. We use Teams for messaging in the office, and someone sends me a message saying ‘Hi Ellie, how are you?’ I then feel like I have to respond saying ‘Good, thanks, how are you?’ because just saying ‘Yes, what do you want?’ sounds rude. Then there’s some back and forth before they get to the actual request.

But I’d much prefer ‘Hi Ellie, could you send me X info as I need it for Y report, please’. Or ‘Hi Ellie, are you free for a quick call about Z?’

I’d say it’s more culture shock than a toxic culture if they are the only two issues so far.

I hate when people message with just Hello. I much prefer when they put what they want. Sometimes I've two minutes spare between meetings, and can reply quickly to their message, when they've said what they want.

Otherwise, in the 2 mins, I ask

Otherwise in the 2 mins, I ask them can I help, and then they launch into something complicated. And then I've to go to my next meeting, so can't reply.
If they had just put all the detail in the original message, I'd be able to reply when I had time.

I missed that it was sent as a separate message. I would be slightly irritated with pointless stuff filling up my inbox, I think she was right to correct you but rude in her manner. For some reason people think being brusque makes them sound important and efficient.

Like many others, I really hate vague opening msgs on Teams / Slack - it's disruptive and wastes time.

While there's nothing wrong with a polite 'hello, how are you?' as an opener, use soft return and add the content of your message immediately therafter: multiple stream-of-consciousness messages are very irritating, particularly if (like me) you have a slightly fragile attention span.

I had a director like this for a while, to whom I taught 'the art of the soft return' and my life is a lot better now.

How old are you OP? I have kids who are Gen z and my experience is that they prefer lots of short messages over a chunk of text that people older seem to prefer. By short I mean one or two sentences per message. They don't seem to mind that it takes longer to have a conversation that way.