I’d like to introduce you to my two good friends, anxiety and imposter syndrome. “It’s all in your head, you’re not actually going to get fired or even be in trouble” is a really lovely sentiment. It’d be really nice if I could actually convince my brain to believe it.
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It’s not anxiety and imposter syndrome when people REALLY DO get fired via email. In the spring/summer of 2008, the company I was dodging the axe…ummm…working at was going through its death rattles. HR not only fired people via email, they liked to do it when the employees went on vacation. So everyone that knew this refused to take time off for ANYTHING, even if they were ill.
“Fill out the attached form and acknowledge…”
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WTHF is with the twice-used term “slacked”? The only way I have ever heard the term before is “slacked off”, as in somebody was being lazy.
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We were recently mandated to use a certain signature block with all our contact information for all our work-related e-mails. It may seem silly, but it was described by whoever is in charge of marketing as a way to ‘present a uniform face for branding purposes.’
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NOOOOOOO!
Be polite, have all your contact info in your signature, then when somebody needs to reach you quickly they don’t have to be fumbling through their contacts, or searching to find some other email with it. People have literally lost contracts with my company simply because a competitor had better communication skills.
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I do have a degree of imposter syndrome. And I wish to stress that EVERYONE has these sorts of things in their heads even if they don’t specifically suffer from anxiety or something else. This may not be work related, and as simple as our predisposed assumptions with how people in general view us, or perhaps someone specific. Some times one will find out that a person thought one thing of you when it turns out they didn’t. It could be not people related, where one just has a fear or worry about something specific happening.
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With out a doubt, the one time I need to call someone, their email or reply was sent via phone with no signature and I have to go look it up.
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Exactly. I use this phrase on my wife sometimes because only women (girlfriends) have used it on me, and fair is fair. To be honest, I would never use it when delivering bad news, usually more like, “where do you want to go on vacation”. But it bugs her, briefly, and that’s fun.
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This is best practices. In most cases, this means that no-one, ever, has to look you up. Also, they can just click/tap on the contact details and actually contact you, even the mail was just forwarded to them.
It’s customer-friendly. And it makes sense to have it as a part of corporate design.
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how does “Hi” translate to “I’m going to be fired.”?!?
The most feared 5 words in all of the english language are…
WHERE
IS
THIS
RELATIONSHIP
GOING
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My complaint with “Subject: Hi” is not the “Hi” per se, but the lack of a definitive subject.
I used to tech at a community college, where I received any number of questions from students via email with the subject line set to “Question”.
“Question” is better than “Hi”, I suppose – but “Question” is an unhelpful disappointment by comparison with, say, “What CSS rule should I use?” or “Help! My server crashed” – you know, subject lines that succinctly express The Subject of the Email.
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Look, all you need is one rogue person who decides it’s “prettier” or (worse) “trendily quirky” to set all their emails to have a tiled texture background and text in bright purple Script MT Bold, or who decides to put a Bible quote in their signature, and you will be very glad that marketing has enough sway at your workplace to control that shit.
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“Let’s chat” makes my blood run cold. I’ve never chatted, but I’ve received many lectures under such auspices.
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Agree. One person I know occasionally sends the entire question in the subject line if it’s short enough and no body in the email. I totally like that.
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I invented twitter. For years I sent snarky comments to my friends that were contained entirely in the subject line. But there was one guy who could not be trained. Every time, he opened the email, saw that the body was blank, and sent me an email saying he didn’t get the body - just the subject line - and could I re-send it.
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I get bothered on the other end, a friend with long-time mental health issues likes to sign off his infrequent emails with “bye”, which creeps me out.
As for headers, I encounter the worst infractions on titles of special interest social media threads. Like “question” or “need help”. But I did have a client who would often send me emails with no title at all!
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I forewarn anyone attempting to remain close to me to never use this phrase unless they actually intend to automatically put me on the defensive.
In my experience, “we need to talk” usually means: “I need to tell you something, and you’re probably not going to like it.”
As a long time admin, I find some folks’ stance that standard greetings and signatures are no longer a necessity rather interesting.
Just because a message originates from a certain account, that doesn’t automatically mean that’s who sent it; many people have assistants or coworkers send emails on their behalf, and so it’s often helpful to have a signature to differentiate.
As for the greeting “Hi” as a subject line, I do find that a tad counterproductive; it’s better to keep it as the opening of the message within the body.
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This is my experience, too. Sends me straight into anxiety.
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Actually at my place of work…an email with a subject like that is instantly considered to be suspicious and possible phishing.
the email kind, not to be confused with the Phish kind…
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