Teams messages: Hi

[Ultravox]

AIBU to hate it when a colleague starts off a conversation like this?

Colleague: Hi

Me: Hi

Colleague: How are you?

Me: I’m fine thanks - how are you?

Colleague: I’m fine. Can you send me that sales spreadsheet please?

I mean I guess I don’t have to ask them how they are, but it feels rude not to after they have asked how I am! But really, are either of us going to type about how we really are on a teams chat? And without any context of what they actually want I can’t really say how busy I am. Honestly it would save so much time if they just wrote

Hi Ultravox. Could you send me that sales spreadsheet please?

YABU: you are a killjoy - they are just being nice and you should smalltalk for a bit and ask them how they are too

YANBU: it’s a waste of time and typing - just cut to the chase!

I just don’t reply. They either figure out what it was they were going to ask you, or they type what they need after 5 mins of silence.
My reply is then: Hi, good thanks, busy! [Answer] - shout if you need anything else.
done.

When they say hi, just reply: 'Hi, how can I help you?'

Sorted.

It’s especially annoying when you get 5 separate messages when you are on another call. The pings are insanely distracting (yes, I know I can turn them off, but then I miss things that I want to see). I do think it is a cultural thing though. There is one particular country that I work with and all of the colleagues there do it. I once asked someone not to and they said they felt it was rude to launch straight into the request without some polite messages first. Unfortunately, this country is on a very different time zone to me, so I get a lot of pre-7am pings that just say “Hi Socks”. It fills me with irrational rage.

This

I just don’t open the chat until they’ve typed something else. If they don’t, I just leave it unread until the next day and don’t respond back anyway. I’ve accidentally done it myself but people can see me typing so hopefully they know it was an accident.

In a similar vein… My old manager used to be the worst for sending “Hi, have you got 2 minutes?”. I don’t miss that feeling of dread. She could be asking for a favour, she could be furious because she’s got the wrong end of the stick from a random person elsewhere. You never really knew what it was about or what mood she was in. My new manager always says “Hi, do you have time to talk about X?” or if it’s completely out of the blue, she tells me why she needs to talk to me about it eg. She’s doing a report or someone’s asked her a question in a meeting

My ex boss would do this too

Boss: Hello

Me: Please state your request

He soon got the message 🤣

Christ I wouldn’t even bother responding to a message that said Hi.

@Ultravox HATE this, what a waste of time. Like some have said, why not just put it all in one message e.g. Hi, how are you? Would you mind sending the spreadsheet....

Some young people do this with text messages too, some even do a return for each sentence with messages pinging incessantly. So frustrating!

I can remember when a young colleague of mine phoned an older client and said "Hello Mr Client, it's Joe Bloggs here, how are you today?" to which the client responded "Never you mind about my health, sonny, what do you want?" 😀

I ignore hi messages. 😳

What bothers me is that because its 'instant' messaging, people expect an instant response. Once upon a time they would've sent an email and waited for a few hours, now they expect you to jump to it regardless of what else your working on.

YANBU. It's infuriating (although I'm tolerant of people doing the several messages thing because I have the noise turned off on my computer, like an adult ). Also because I do it myself.
It's a work chat, not MSN chat anno 2001.

Huh? Get with the times and teach yourself and your team to use Teams properly.

Do you not know about do not disturb?!

I hate preamble - cut to it!

Hi, can you sort xx

Im not hoping anyone is well, if they are not, they should be off sick!

YANBU. Get to the point!

Teams etiquette is a total nightmare tbh.

I have one particular colleague who calls endlessly to ask things which could be handled with a short message or an email.

He calls four or five times a day to tell me things he could have put in a four word email. Often he'll call when I'm on a call with other colleagues.

Then when I do pick up, on average one time in every four or five calls, the first thing he'll say is "sorry to call"... WTF? If you know it's intrusive and unnecessary why are you doing it?

"Can I ask you a question?" bugs me! You just did!

YANBU. I wonder if people doing it spend a lot of time on OLD. It's been a few years since I was on there but the random 'Hi' fishing messages were infuriating there too. On Teams, it's evident whether someone is available to answer so there's no need at all to put those feelers out.

I agree, particularly when they wait ages before sending the real message, so I am hovering in front of Teams thinking "and???" and feeling that I cannot get on with anything else while this unknown request is hanging over me! 😂

This

I hate this - is a "young person" type thing? I've had this on a phone call recently where someone was ringing from a company that had caused all sorts of issues, they were ringing to deny responsibility and the call started like this "Hi 1973 how are you doing today?" - why? When I said look can you tell me what you want they said that I was rude! like WTAF? Gets my goat (not heard that on MN for a while)

There is also the WhatsApp equivalent where people send 6 separate messages when one message would have done. Or the passive aggressive “all ok” coz you have replied instantly to their messages. 😡

I had a colleague that had her Teams status automatically sent to "Please don't just say Hi - send me your full message, I promise I won't find it rude and it will save us both time :-)"
I like this approach!!

I never respond to hi’s. Either give me the full thing in one go or feel free to send me an email and I’ll read it when I can…in one go! YANBU