To feel hurt this deeply?

[Hspdirect]

I need to start by saying yes, I am a highly sensitive person but does work correspondence always need to be so aggressive?

As a manager and employee, I always try my best to be patient, kind and friendly but my inbox is constantly a string of urgent demands, highlighted failures (whether my fault or not) and accusations.

There is no doubt in my mind that I'm not the only one whose mailbox looks like this but I guess I just wonder why? I'm not asking for people to tiptoe but there seems to be no fostering of positive and nurturing relationships or thought around how certain messages may be received. While this isn't an essential, I just think, well why not?

What kind of messages? It's hard to tell if you're overreacting or not

Even without detail, im going to say you way over sensitive!!

It's not possible to know, with no examples. But in general, I don't pussyfoot around people's potentially hurt feelings when I am reminding them of missed deadlines or errors. I am civil, yes, but we are not friends, and this is a professional situation. If your inefficiency or forgetfulness is making my job harder, I'm not going to pretend that isn't so.

Emails, correspondence can often be blunt, some of it needs to be. There’s a place for kindness, empathy, warmth, but there’s also a need to get work done, hit targets, deadlines, deal with urgent issues, nip any possible problems quickly. You sort out the day, deal with the urgent, delete the dross, getting cracking on actually having a good, productive and hopefully nice day at work. You’ll feel better, and your colleagues, subordinates (you say you are a Manager?) will know that you are cracking on with things properly. Nothing wrong with a please or thank you either in an email, correspondence or in person by the way.

I prefer straight talking to lots of “I trust this email finds you well” and “Hiw was your weekend” and “Just wanted to share a teensy bit of feedback, for your information, sorry to trouble you, have a nice day!”

No one has time for that.

If your talking about general work email. Then yes you're being to sensitive.

If. the failures are your or your team /companies fault I think it’s fair enough. You have a service level commitment, stick to it.

Interesting! Perhaps this kind of work isn't for me. I've always tried to treat people with kindness and show genuine interest in them 🙃

Sorry, but I have no time for that on the receiving end of emails either. I don't have time to read paragraphs enquiring how my week is going and hear that people hope my dog got treated well at the groomer. Cut to the chase, what do you need from me right now and we can chit chat after work if needed.

Work email is just that - professional correspondence which is designed to deliver a message or a request in an efficient fashion. If the message is that the deadline is at risk of being missed because I haven't done what I was supposed to do, then tell me that so I can action it right away. No need for pleasantries.

I think 'hope you had a nice weekend..just enquiring as to insert work issue here...' is fine!

As a parent of a HSP sometimes offence is taken where none is meant and definitely overthinking the smallest detail.

For your own sake, try and shrug it off (easier said than done, I know).

I couldn't give a toss if they had a good weekend.

Aw I love hearing about what people have been up to. I'm pretty good time management wise though so I do try and carve out these times for more human interaction! It's been helpful reading these responses though and realising not everyone is like me 🙂

I don't think being to the point and blunt in emails means that you're not kind!

You’re in the wrong place here op. Mn is full of people who find someone saying hello to them is an infringement on their privacy, and that anything other than bald aggressive facts are an unnecessary waste of time.

I think people have lost the art of communicating in a non confrontational manner and it’s often really jarring, I agree.

I'm fond of my colleagues, and happy to chat in the corridor, or go for lunch, but work emails about pressing matters aren't the place to make enquiries about how someone's weekend was!

I honestly despair at the responses on here sometimes. Of course you should start your email with some form of salutation and not just jump straight into a list of demands. I honestly don't know anyone who wouldn't unless the actual sender is trying to be curt or is annoyed over something.
OP give an example of a type of email you find rude as it difficult to determine if you are being too sensitive or not.

To be honest, it's made me realise that it could probably be a lot worse 😂

I find it like an essential to have email pleasantries with people I email regularly, e.g. knowing how their weekends went. It's by building this habit that I built good working relationships with people, because I care about them at work and personally, and feel a stronger sense of loyalty and commitment in my work and towards them, to share workloads.

Sure, but to me, the pleasantries are ones to exchange verbally, face to face.

Firstly OP I'd strongly advise you stop thinking of yourself as 'sensitive' because it always smacks if having decided that you're a special fragile person who feels things more deeply than others and so needs special soft handling, which bluntly, you'll not get. In reality we have a great deal of control over our responses to things and if we want to can put some work into gaining a healthy perspective. It's not unusual in the workplace for communication to involve instruction and on occasion to include some negative feedback. Its also not unusual for tone to seem quite brusque. The key is to consider objectively the content of the comments made and whether they are reasonable and accurate. If you think they're not then you can address them through the proper channels. Without seeing examples it's difficult to know whether you're talking about normal office communication or you've ended up in a workplace where communication isn't as respectful as it should be.

I've seen many young women start a new job being over friendly and nice, in fact priding themselves on their interpersonal skills. And then something happens - redundancy, colleagues leaving or dismissed, takeovers etc - and they learn the hard way that it's the quality of work that counts not how friendly you are. Of course treating colleagues with courtesy and respect is a given.

Ok so, one example -someone asked me for this blank form this morning and I said I didn't know such a form existed but that I'd make some enquiries to see if I could track it down. They then said I knew exactly what it was, that we'd spoken about it more than once and tracked down an example where they'd sent it to me 3 years ago when I was on maternity leave. So not only could they have just dug it out themselves but then accused me of lying and didn't bother to consider any other explanation.

@5128gap look up Highly Sensitive Person.

It's not just op 'being sensitive' and it's certainly not something they can just 'get over'.

It's ironic if replies to your original post are in the same manner as to the emails. Just keep being patient and friendly as you are in your own email communications.