Microsoft Teams chats

[ItsOnlyMee1]

Does it piss anybody else off when a colleague says hello/good morning in Teams and then waits for you to respond before telling you what they want?

It's infuriating!

https://nohello.net/en/

just ask the question

I’ll sometimes say “hi Bob” or a straight “Morning” first as a separate message as a heads up if the detail to follow is private so they have a chance to stop sharing/move windows etc before the main message comes. I don’t expect a response, and they can see I am typing the follow up. I’ve been on too many teams meetings I’ve been in where either emails or teams messages pop up on screen for all to see.

I’ve never experienced this, it sounds a bit strange!

No no no. 50 of those a day, I might not want to help! Soft return is your friend.

Hello to me is a code for are you available. Seems just courtesy to me.

Nobody mentioned being scared. Just polite. If you're too busy to type "good thanks, how can I help?" then you need to talk to your line manager about your workload.

If being polite stresses you out, then maybe you should ask yourself why that is. Do you think your time is too important to waste on being pleasant? If you are pathologically unable to spend a very brief amount of time on the niceties that smooth our interactions, you should probably make sure your colleagues understand your handicap so they can consciously make allowances

Don't be ridiculous, you're undermining yourself

Yes, same. I don’t mind it at all. I usually know what they’re getting in touch about anyway. I’ll reply with a hello when I know I’ve got time for a discussion about what they’re after. Usually when they just send a hello it’s not that urgent - if it was, they’d send the actual request.

For me, if it wasn’t urgent, and needed an actual conversation rather than “please send info x”, I’d say “hello, have you got 5 minutes?”. Sometimes it’s easier to set time aside to talk with someone than send great long messages.

We have a neighbour who does this. She’ll send you a message saying hi are you working from home tomorrow? And you’ll say yes, and then she’ll ask if you walk her dog on your lunch break for free. I now just don’t reply and after about 10 minutes she’ll type out what she wants.

I have a colleague who does this. It's infuriating. I'm busy, I'm not hanging on for your every few words phrase to pop up. I'd rather they called me as it would be easier and most of these one-way chats end in them asking can they call me. I'm pretty certain this person thinks they are being considerate.

Within our chat we do genuinely ask how people are so you’d hate to be working with us! 😂

if people want to ask a question i find that they do just that but would include the Hi (name) in the question. Something like: Hi bob, can you send over the….

Yeah I hate this too. It’s always people from our Finance team who I’ve never met that do it, they clearly don’t care how I am so just ask the question FFS!

The other thing that annoys me is people ignoring Do Not Disturb status. It happens so often now that I put DND status on and people still message. I raised this in a meeting once (an in person one!) and several people said they never look at people’s statuses, they just send the message and assume people will just reply when convenient. No concept of the fact that just sending the message means I have to stop and read it (because it must be urgent if it’s been sent when I’m on DND, must it?) and then they know I’ve read it so I feel pressured to reply.

Before Teams we had a system (maybe Lync?) which blocked anyone from messaging you when DND was on. That was great.

Maybe you don’t want to help them.

Ugh, I have moved to a country where it is considered incredibly rude to not do this. I hate it. If you ask for the thing you need in your first message, people will respond "hey, how are you" and then only once you have said how you are will they answer your actual question. I hate it (but otherwise, wonderful country)

I have a colleague (well sort of colleague, he's semi-retired and now works remotely as and when on a zero hours contract for us), who has a habit of messaging "Hello MiddleAgedDread" and when you reply he just calls. It's only ever a social catch-up or he's scouting around looking for work (which I'm unlikely to have anything to pass onto him), but I just wish he'd ask if i'm free for a catch up first!! He used to do the same thing when he came in the office, turn up announced every few months and then expect you have to time free to chat!

OMG yes!

CONSOLIDATE your thoughts, people! I've now stopped replying until they ask me what they want. Unless it's my boss.

I don't mind too much but I won't reply until they've asked for what they want, or it's someone I would generally chat to.

I only check teams when I'm not actively doing something otherwise I'd find it disruptive if someone was just saying hi and waiting.

I'm not working today but just logged in to check something. 13 unread teams messages. I bloody hope they're asking for something not just saying hello and waiting.

I do consider it rude to get someone's attention when you don't know if they're busy then make them interact before telling them what you want. We need to be able to prioritise.

I have a friend who'll text 'are you free on Wednesday' then wait for a response. This is the same, I might be free but that doesn't mean I want to give my time to your thing. Tell me what it is rather than putting me on the spot.

I used to always reply when someone messaged Hello, but then I realised that most of them go on to post the rest of their message line by line. Bang bang bang. It drives me nuts so now I usually switch Teams off at that point & check again 20 minutes later.

Soft returns are not difficult.

I always forget that if you press return it doesn't move to the next line like in an email but it sends the message. So then I have to type the question really fast so they don't think I'm a lunatic who randomly sends people Teams messages for no reason.

Well I didn't know that soft returns were a thing so having Googled what one actually is and how to do it I will try and remember to use it in future, while wondering WTF they didn't leave the normal return function as was and pick another way to send a message once you were happy with it's contents.

That would have been a much better idea.

Omg yes! I just don’t reply now until the follow up message arrives

Yeah that’s not quite the same..

Ignore it

This