Why YSK: These email tips are helpful for people who struggle with boundaries and want to communicate more assertively.
Some of these are good, some are just needlessly assertive nonsense. Especially the two where it’s actively refusing to acknowledge fault or apologize for it, which is standard PR crap. Refusing to apologize and instead saying “thanks for your patience” is what I expect to hear from my ISP when they miss their scheduled install, not from a coworker.
There’s nothing wrong with being a normal human being that is capable of admitting their own shortcomings. If never saying sorry means “being a boss” then that explains why there’s so many sociopaths as CEOs.
“Hope that make sense?” Vs “Let me know if you have any questions.”
The latter is saying “here’s the explanation, figure it out, bother me again if you can’t”. The fromer, while poorly worded, is being helpful, actively attempting to make sure the person understands before leaving them to it. It’s both a kindness and doing your due diligence.
Seriously… and oftentimes just combining both works better. “Hey sorry I’m late, I appreciate you all being patient” or “Hope that all makes sense, but please feel free to ask any questions if they come up”
I’m so happy to see a sane comment at the top here. So many of these are just stupid and border on alpha male don’t take not shit or admit fault crap.
I think it goes the other way too. For people that tend to apologize too much, even when it’s not their fault, mixing in a “thanks for your patience” is a good way to balance it out a bit.
I’m torn. I feel like admitting guilt and owning up to your failures is a virtue, but I’m not sure the rest of the world agrees with me
Neurotypical enough to read body language, neurodivergent enough to never understand why
To be honest, I find most of these passive aggressive and patronizing.
I agree, but, you’d be surprised how many people find many of these seemingly innocuous distinctions offensive (if only a little bit). For example, I was once chided by HR for saying ‘no problem’ during a seemingly friendly discussion.
Seems like a toxic work environnement to get chided for so little…
Agreed. Got my revenge though. They got fired a week after I quit working there.
If someone has a problem with “no problem,” they have a problem.
I mean apparently some people think a thumbs up in a chat is passive aggressive.
👍
I don’t know how else to explain it, but thumbsup is the boomerest emoji.
Nah, mate. 😱 is the boomerest emoji
I do NP!
Most? I can definitely see “when can I expect an update?”, that one’s terrible. “It would be best if we” sounds pretty self-assured without a modifier such as “in my opinion” (which is what the original option was doing). “Nice catch!” is also a bit too honeyed and casual as well. But I don’t see a problem with the rest of them.
Nah. By my count, 1 is context dependent, 2 are okay, the remaining 6 are kinda cunty.
it’s a guide to being a soulless corporate cog
“When can I expect an update” makes you sound like a micro managing POS
Yeah some of these sound straight up aggressive lol
My go to is usually like “I just wanted to touch base on [topic]” if I want an update on something without seeming like I’m pressuring them.
Half of it is fragile CEO ego reply
Yeah seriously, there’s nothing wrong with admitting you made a mistake.
“It’d be easier to discuss in person” means “I don’t want a record of this because it’s either illegal or shows my incompetence”.
Any meeting that they want to talk about in writing should ALWAYS be recorded.
Also, carefully laying thoughts out in text for 40 minutes takes a lot less time than explaining it meaningfully to multiple people, probably more than once if it was important enough. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
To me calls are more about efficiency, I prefer to have a call and talk through a complex issue for 15 min instead of needing 5+ back and forth emails over an afternoon to get everyone on the same page.
Couldn’t agree more.
Yes, either that or “I haven’t thought this through well enough that I can explain it in writing, so please let me fumble through an oral explanation and—in all likelihood—waste your time”.
Or, “I’m dyslectic and would prefer to talk rather than write”, which is fair enough, I think.
God I hate forced formality like this. This is the kind of shit Gen Z and millennials are rebelling against and I’m all for it. It is stupid for us to encourage people to be themselves and then to expect them to act like a completely different person at work, including the way they talk.
You may see it as forced formality, but these tips were created by a person with ADHD to help others who struggle with setting boundaries, especially with time. The creator is a Millennial comic artist. It helps me be more myself when I respect my schedule and don’t over-apologize, but I can understand that not everyone sees it the same way.
I think you can do all of the things you said without being overly formal about everything! For reference I have ADHD too. ☺️
I honestly don’t see these as being overly formal, but I worked in finance and real estate legal compliance for many years and that may have warped my perception. I think it all depends on your environment and how well the person reading this knows you (aka will they be able to recognize your intended tone?)
People write work emails differently, but I write more like the “don’t” list than the “boss” list in most situations. I also rarely put much thought into it unless it’s an extremely delicate situation. The only problem I have with this post is it’s presumption that your way is the boss way and the other way is somehow inferior.
YSK, the person that embraces all of these, as written, is RIGHTFULLY perceived as an assholes by their peers.
Some of them are great and can even make things less awkward for the other person. The “small error” one for example. The “I have an appointment” one is necessary when talking with higher ups in big companies who completely devalue your needs. But some are assholish, yeah.
Take those tips with a grain of salt, as this sort of conventional politeness strategy is heavily dependent on culture, situation, and sometimes even individual*.
I predict that those tips would work poorly with people from cultures where negative politeness (“don’t burden the others”) is valued over positive politeness (“show appreciation towards the others”). This is fairly common in East Asia for example, but even here in Latin America I got a few people rolling their eyes at “biztalk” like “obrigado pela paciência” (thank you for the patience) over a simple apology.
In special, I can picture the centre advice rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, as it’s basically the writer lifting a burden from one’s own shoulders (struggling to word something) by creating a burden to the reader (“I expect you to be available offline for a meeting”).
*if anyone wants to dig deeper into this subject, check Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. It’s a bit of a technical read for Linguistics (more specifically Pragmatics), but I got plenty laymen who love the book.
This is a fantastic comment, thank you. I think it’s fascinating that there is such a mixed reaction, and your explanation certainly helps me make sense of it.
Yup - the mixed reactions are likely due to the cultural dependency. I’m almost sure that, if we were able to map those replies in a world map, the positive reactions would all clutter into some spots of the world, while the negative ones would clutter in other places. (That would be rather cool to study.)
That would be incredible to study. I’m now going to pay attention to this with my friends from different cultures.
In a good workplace, none of these fucking matter…
Yup, I just talk the way I want to talk.
I talk with my own character, politely and everyone is happy.
I don’t understand what businesses some people are working in that you’d need to be so careful with how you talk.
I work for a global multi billion dollar company and never had issues, plus the higher ups don’t even talk like this in meetings unless it’s some official email or something.
A companies in which managers are constantly telling their employees what they didn’t do good (which is actually what they didn’t do that the manager wanted them to do). These are usually micromanagers/new managers.
Good luck finding a good workplace in a capitalist society.
I work IT at a college, its pretty good here. Definitely not perfect, but people are pretty easy going where they don’t care about stuff like this.
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This is borderline toxic management lol.
I think it definitely depends on your relationship with the recipient. While I do think most of those are better options, I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily what you should write.
Agreed, it is not always prudent to be overly assertive.
For example, I may be working with someone else on a project that is not time sensitive, but for my own planning I like to stay up to date on progress. I absolutely would reach out to someone with a “Just checking in, how are things going with X” because, well, that’s honestly all I’m doing. Checking in.
Meanwhile, saying “When can I expect an update?” is almost like saying “I don’t think you’re going fast enough and I’m getting impatient,” which sends the wrong type of message, makes me seem like a hardass, and might impact the quality of work if the other person suddenly feels rushed.
Its not that simple. Its ok to apologize sometimes. But not so apologize every fucking time like I do for every minor slide. Also I can see the usefulness to just make the shot call instead of staying 1h writing that message/email. Others are ok too.
I write emails for an hour sometimes. Some things you want to have in writing so you can point back to it later. I work in a government position and for a lot of the folks I deal with I need to be able to show I told them this on this date and the trail that goes along with it to be able to take action on what they did that they shouldn’t have or didn’t do that they should have. That hour on an email could prevent or shorten tons of meetings and headaches. Just depends on your job.
Oh I know exactly what you mean. When I was in my government position I would write paragraphs of information as a response to what some may think was a simple question, but you’re right, in those types of positions you have to over explain because it saves a lot of headache going back and forth.
Yeah you’re right. I’m in IT. Some stuff sometimes is better discussed via short call. But in government positions I can see you need to have it all on record sure.
Some of those “wrong” ones would be fine for instant messages like Slack or Teams.
Totally agree. I think for me these are more about increasing confidence and assertiveness in communication rather than just better wording.
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I’d never say ‘always happy to help’ because sometimes I’m actually not, particularly if a client is a pain and badgers me constantly. I don’t want to invite more interruption
The thank you for your patience one has always rubbed me wrong. There’s honor in apologizing in my opinion. I do like the making a mistake one though and I’ve tried to adopt that mentality when I’m working with QA on something I’ve merged. I want them to feel good about finding the mistakes and I want to avoid an adversarial relationship. I’ve learned that I get way better tickets from QA if they like how I treat them. Treat them like valuable experts and they’ll act like valuable experts.
The thank you for your patience one has always rubbed me wrong.
I wouldn’t say wrong - it is disrespectful since I wasn’t patient by choice. You fucked up, you own it. But then I’m not a native speaker, maybe it just feels that way in my country.
I’m a native speaker, and it comes off as condescending to me.
“Thank you for your patience” should really come after an apology for the delay, depending on the reason. Owning up to the fact that you aren’t on schedule is not a failing at all, and acknowledging that your correspondent is dealing with the situation gracefully just serves to further smooth things over.
I don’t like it, and will always apologize if it is my fault.
Honestly, I think its terrible advice lol. This is the type of shit that makes people not like management.
