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MU Peeves Thread
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
when someone i don’t know pages “hi” and i say hi back and then they say “how’s it going” i want to scream
This is a personal pet peeve of mine as well, but I think it could be a cultural thing?
I get this all the time on Teams at work with our India based team. They send hi. I have to send hi back. They ask how I am doing, I have to say I am fine, how are you. Then they send all the stuff they need to talk to me about it.
I do not get this from our non-India-based teams. The Americans just start messages with “Do this thing” and skip the foreplay.
it’s absolutely a cultural thing and i also get it from some people at work. i don’t think it’s an american vs other countries thing tho, because i do experience it from americans.
in both MUs and work i try to just head it off at the pass by saying something like “hi! what can i do for you?”
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
it’s absolutely a cultural thing and i also get it from some people at work. i don’t think it’s an american vs other countries thing tho, because i do experience it from americans.
in both MUs and work i try to just head it off at the pass by saying something like “hi! what can i do for you?”
Yeah, I’ve started doing that. And I was mostly trying to be funny, but didn’t mean to cast it as one group vs another.
Most of our US-based employees are from NY, NJ, and Philly, so…yeah. More of that than generic “American”.
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I hate that this is the first source I found for it but:
https://www.linkedin.com/advice/3/how-can-you-differentiate-between-transactional
Transactional vs relational communication was actually a big thing for me to learn when I was working at a place that involved SO MUCH WORK with people in relational countries. It is super regional! Broadly, there are definite trends.
I had to make fucking notes. It does not come naturally to me. I am SO transactional. It was eye-opening for me.
she/they
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I generally start a conversation with a wave, which is both a polite notice that I’d like to talk to you and a way for me to find out if I’m talking to a void before I start.
I live in a timezone that means people quite often aren’t there even if their character is. Often, by the time someone AFK comes back, I’m asleep. Better to just send a quick wave as a politer sort of ping.
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See, I look at that scenario and feel the opposite - if it might be a full day before I can talk to them, I’d feel inclined to include the reason in my first message
ETA: probably with a caveat that they should only write back when they’re free though
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@Evilgrayson said in MU Peeves Thread:
which is both a polite notice that I’d like to talk to you
While that might be your intent, a fair few folk here have established that’s often not how it feels.
Send your message proper, if you don’t get a reply in 30 minutes to an hour, send an @mail.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
I think we can all agree that the following is horrible and should never be used except on your worst enemies:
You paged: Hi, can we talk?
<silence> -
@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
I think we can all agree that the following is horrible and should never be used except on your worst enemies:
You paged: Hi, can we talk?
<silence>Just reading this gave me anxiety
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@Floof Just reply to “We need to talk” with “Yeah, we do.”
Now they are ALSO anxious.
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@Pavel Which is nice if you already know that, but I’m not a mind reader and that’s very much not how I was raised.
Cultures vary. Even in the same country, cultures vary, and my culture and the culture of most people here are very different in some surprising ways. Just opening up with what I’m after would be seven shades of rude and utterly against all the rules of human interaction I’ve spent decades learning to follow by rote because buggered if I can actually understand any of them.
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In the immortal words of Dara O’Briain, if someone says “We need to talk” you immediately respond with “I fucked your brother”, and now it changes the entire conversation on your terms.
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I think the length of the response time changes what feels rude to me a lot. In person, rushing past a greeting to tell someone what I want would be rude unless I specifically knew they didn’t give a fuck about a ‘how do you do fellow humans’ ritual.
When the communication is going to be offset by a couple of hours though, sending a message feels a bit to me like leaving a voice-mail or sending an email. I’ll still include pleasantries, but I’ll also try and bring up the context for my message - and it’s for me just as much as it is the other person, because I’m often sending a message to remind myself to do things later, like scheduling follow-up RP.
I also find that I’m more comfortable getting a contextless greeting from someone I know well, mostly because I already have a sense of their communication style and the topics they’re likely to bring to my attention. With someone I’ve talked with less, I’m curious what has them contacting me, so I’m more likely to follow up a message like that with nudging them to get to the reason for the contact, rather than continue casual chatter.
Some of it also is online culture specific, though - I’ve had bad experiences with unfamiliar people messaging me out of the blue with ill intent, so that makes online messages without context something I’m more inherently wary of.
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@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
I had to make fucking notes. It does not come naturally to me. I am SO transactional. It was eye-opening for me.
there was a lot about my last Real Job that was complicated and nooot great, but man oh man, a lot of it involved working with people in New York and I loved it so much. it was like a breath of fresh air I didn’t even know I needed that badly. I don’t know how exactly this came to be since I was raised mostly in the Midwest and the South where relational is basically mandatory, looool
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
when someone i don’t know pages “hi” and i say hi back and then they say “how’s it going” i want to scream
This is a personal pet peeve of mine as well, but I think it could be a cultural thing?
I get this all the time on Teams at work with our India based team. They send hi. I have to send hi back. They ask how I am doing, I have to say I am fine, how are you. Then they send all the stuff they need to talk to me about it.
I do not get this from our non-India-based teams. The Americans just start messages with “Do this thing” and skip the foreplay.
You’re talking about an entire business culture that is descended (at least on the English-speaking side of things — who else would say “do the needful”) from Victorian British colonialism. You don’t emerge from that without some…recognizable quirks.
I’ve found that being polite and direct (at least in my time working at HCL and Microsoft) at the first given opportunity, i.e. “how can I help you? I’m engaged in something right now but have a few minutes” tends to be an effective shortcut.
I woke up feeling so good, I think I’d better call in sick/ I need a personal trainer to help me hold my drink
I plan to be spontaneous next time we meet/I’m putting off procrastinating until next week
I’ll get onto it when I give a shit -
@SpaceKhomeini said in MU Peeves Thread:
You’re talking about an entire business culture that is descended (at least on the English-speaking side of things — who else would say “do the needful”) from Victorian British colonialism. You don’t emerge from that without some…recognizable quirks.
I’ve found that being polite and direct (at least in my time working at HCL and Microsoft) at the first given opportunity, i.e. “how can I help you? I’m engaged in something right now but have a few minutes” tends to be an effective shortcut.
Oh, I know. Honestly, I find it very pleasant generally speaking, and really enjoy working with my non-US colleagues (other than scheduling meetings during cross-over timezones). I just find it amusing to contrast that with the more, shall we say, assertive and abrupt nature of people from Philly and surrounding areas.
I think that LinkedIn article was super interesting, and it’s definitely reframed a bit of how I think.
And, I have to say - I have grown accustomed to “doing the needful”, and it just warms my heart now. I have no idea how that became the idiom, but it just works for me.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
I have no idea how that became the idiom, but it just works for me.
It’s an old English idiom, and was in common use even in the United States for a time. ‘Needful’ has had many meanings as it evolved, though the meaning of “what is necessary or urgent” can be traced back to the 14th century.
So, very technically, it’s a perfectly formed English sentence that says precisely what it means, “do what is necessary or urgent.” It just sounds odd to native Western English speakers because it isn’t in common use.
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@SpaceKhomeini said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’ve found that being polite and direct (at least in my time working at HCL and Microsoft) at the first given opportunity, i.e. “how can I help you? I’m engaged in something right now but have a few minutes” tends to be an effective shortcut.
That approach turns the whole thing on its head, which is why it’s so effective. You have to be polite at all times - but if the other party only has a few minutes, it becomes more polite to get to the point so they can go do the needful.
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This reminds me of a cartoon thing I once saw called “What British people say Vs what they mean”, which had the example of…
“Oh, by the way…” which actually means “The primary purpose of this conversation is…”
Which, as a British person, I can say is remarkably accurate. It is definitely seen as rude here to come straight into a conversation wanting something without a little small talk first.
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@Pacha That’s interesting. I personally can appreciate someone showing politeness before asking for something, but it’s easy for that to come off as an attempt to butter me up. I think I’d generally prefer someone come to the point: at least that way, there’s no chance I’ll feel lied to about your intentions.
