My Slack pet peeve: "Hi" and then a further 2 minutes of "John Doe is writing a message...".
Gather your thoughts, then write everything - the context, what you need from me, everything - in a single message.
Gather your thoughts, then write everything - the context, what you need from me, everything - in a single message.
>hi!
>Can I ask a question?
Just speak your mind or even better: just send an email.
IM is really great for sexting but it’s not great for anything professional IMO. Transcripts aren’t always saved and you can’t trust the transcript from a lot of clients (I had one person who would often edit messages to completely change their meaning after sending them, I had to make a habit of screenshooting IM conversations.) If you really need to have a conversation and can’t talk to me in person you can probably get my phone number.
The people who do the "Hi" thing are savages and need handled appropriately.
Options:
1. Ignore their message until they've fully communicated their initial ask. it is not your responsibility to engage to "Hi".
2. Sporadically type something in to the chat box but never actually send the message. This gives the other person the "bubbles" but they have to keep waiting for a message that will never otherwise appear ; )
The greeting is irrelevant because truly neither party of the message cares. That's okay too. You have a question, I probably have an answer so just ask your question.
The absolute most respectful thing you can do to the person you are messaging is to send as much info as possible in the original message and then let them respond. If you do need to engage first with something like "do you have a moment for a question?" then still write your question first so you can copy/paste it immediately.