Is it rude to send a late night email to a business?

[YellowPolkaDotBikini1980]

Just to clarify I don't mean WhatsApp or text or anything. An actual email.

I was up at 2 am, I remembered something and sent an email. Something along the lines of 'just to confirm the Birthday Cake we ordered has chocolate frosting but is a vanilla flavour cake'.

I just wanted to be clear because in the past, with a different bakery, we had verbally said 'chocolate frosting, vanilla cake' but ended up getting just a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

When picking up the cake, my sister was told 'and by the way, I don't appreciate getting emails at all hours of the night.'

Surely you turn off email notifications for you phone if you don't want to be disturbed. I don't think the Nigerian Princes and the 'Manhood extenders' are waiting for business hours to spam people's inboxes.

AIBU to send emails late at night?

@LifeofBrienne @DreamW3aver
DH has several different set ups on his phone so that he doesn't get work notifications outside work. I think a number people don't know about this/ don't know how to do it/ would find it annoying or hard to do.

When we had to worry about DM I had it set up so only notifications and calls from my family would sound at night.

I know bakers work very hard but that interaction wouldn't have been nice especially as the person picking up didn't send the email.

it's a weird thing for her to say. emails can be accessed only in business hours if that what they want.

Phoning or texting would be a no no, but not emailing.

My old childminder was like this. I used to email in the evenings after I finished work, or at the weekend. She told me not to do this and to only email her during her working hours. She said, "The notification pops up on my phone and it stresses me out." We nearly fell out over it as I thought it was really unreasonable of her. She didn't like my suggestion that she sets up a work email address and turns off notifications.

Nope, not rude, but I'd say "vanilla cake, chocolate icing" rather than the icing flavour first! Might be confusing the baker if they're reading quickly.

It does piss me off a bit if I get work emails at that time, though I'd never mention it like that to a client. But it's easy to use schedule send, so if someone has chosen not to do that I think its a bit rude, given that these days emails often come through immediately to our phones just like texts.

I don't turn my phone off at night as I use it for my morning alarm, and I don't want to miss potential emergency calls by putting it on do not disturb. Its a bit of a faff to be turning email notifications off and on again every day, so I just put up with the odd late night emailer. I'd never be rude to them though.

No. It was 2 days after the order but that still was 4 days before collection and I wouldn't expect a 4-day-old cake that wasn't a fruitcake.

That's hilarious, do they even understand how email works??

I find absolutely no need to have my email notifications on at any hour of the day. I just check periodically.

If it was a normal email I'd schedule to send at 8am next morning.

However when I do invoices for our business, usually in the evenings or at weekends, I haven't found a way to schedule them, via the accounts package. One customer has commented. My own phone is on do not disturb from 10pm - 7am

Not at all. Only rudeness would be if you expected an out of hours response. It is the business's fault if they did not put their phone on silent while they slept.

Schedule an email for 2am tonight to send her a link to this thread 😀

And I certainly wouldn't be giving them any further business after getting rudeness like that.

I was just clarifying here because ( Istrongly suspect that) I am ND and social conventions sometimes pass me by.

They are being weird!

You can use do not disturb, and have an alarm, and you can exclude certain contacts so "do not disturb except".....eg your family
(On my pretty basic samsung)

Exactly this. A friend of a friend we wanted to support.

Email at any time.

Business owner here has had a bizarre response. They're probably neurotically checking their emails at all hours and haven't turned off notifications.

Not your problem.

it would depend on the tone of the message for me.

if it was a sorry for the late email I’ve just had I thought it is definitely a vanilla cake isn’t it? Then no problem.

if it was worded rudely and/or requested a response quickly then I wouldn’t appreciate that being one of the first things I read in the morning

Someone peoples phones to ping their emails all night.
I wait until business hours.

How do you know it's unusual?
As you say it's personal choice, how do you know the consensus? Feel the need to be accessible sounds rather judgemental about people who operate their phones differently to you. Maybe the baker has elderly parents

No. I did not expect any immediate response, maybe some time during business hours or even the day after. Just something like 'yes, I can confirm your cake is vanilla with chocolate frosting'.

It's not rude at all.

All phones have a mute option over night so that was her silly fault if she didn't mute her phone.

Her response however was rude.

I don't think you should, because you should be trying to get some sleep unless you work nights.

elderly parents who send emergency communications via email? Give over.

You can send an email at any time. Don't use schedule emails. It's not reliable. Business needs to learn to manage their notifications. It's not hard.

Just don't expect a response back outside work hours. I had someone complain I never got back to them at a job. It was Monday morning and I looked and they'd emailed on the Saturday. (At this workplace I didn't even have access to my computer outside work hours.)

In that case I'd be aware that there is no universal view on this and some people will mind and others won't. That possibly doesn't help you know how to behave in a similar future situation but does make you aware that some people don't want out of hours business contact and may comment negatively about it.