[HN Gopher] Do not apologize for replying late to my email
___________________________________________________________________
Do not apologize for replying late to my email
Author : validatori
Score : 193 points
Date : 2026-02-11 10:38 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ploum.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (ploum.net)
| its_notjack wrote:
| I do feel there's far too much of a focus on instantaneous
| response in today's world, both at work and in personal life. If
| something I can give you is truly preventing you from moving
| forward then that's fair enough, but otherwise send emails, don't
| rush the replies, and let people plan their own time.
| ggm wrote:
| A buried appeal to avoid top posting.
|
| Good, but like all good things, top posting is why we can't have
| good things.
|
| It isn't going to stop.
| ranaexmachina wrote:
| Bottom posting confuses the hell out of most people. I gave it
| a try but people kept complaining so I'm back to top posting
| even though it makes absolutely no sense.
| easton wrote:
| Wonder if there's a way to make the popular email clients
| (outlook/gmail) re-sort conversation view so that the newest
| reply is at the bottom.
|
| then enforce it by policy across the org, and watch the chaos
| as people read before speaking.
| miroljub wrote:
| True. Once a coworker asked me why I was responding with an
| empty mail since my reply was at the bottom, and he didn't
| bother to scroll down. Since then, I gave up and just started
| using conventions everyone else is using. The goal is not
| purity, but clarity of communications.
|
| I even started to avoid inline responses and comments, many
| find even that confusing.
| Gracana wrote:
| Same. I tried really hard to quote properly, because I was so
| annoyed by the top-posting mess that everyone else did, and
| it frustrated me that people would add you to an email where
| you need to read 100 things that came before it (with
| increasingly garbled formatting) to understand what was going
| on.
|
| I felt people were unwilling to take the responsibility for
| communicating properly, and so they took the easy route where
| they could shrug their shoulders and say "I included all the
| context."
|
| I only ever got complaints from people who were confused by
| the quoting style or didn't know what the email was about.
| I'm not sure if it's still true, but at the time, Outlook
| didn't use threaded view mode by default and most people
| didn't know about it. FWIW I work in manufacturing and not in
| tech, I expect the level of competence in tech is a little
| higher, though I also hear how people moan about having to
| learn the tools they use every day, so maybe there's little
| difference.
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| I bottom-post if the other person do so first. That almost
| never happens these days. I guess if too many do it like that
| then no one will be the first to bottom-post, even when both
| would prefer that. Not sure what a good solution would be
| that did not involve confusing random other people with
| bottom-posts.
|
| I remember around the time top-posting had taken over,
| someone on a mailing list being upset about having their mail
| cut up and quoted inline by someone else. Can imagine today
| many might react like that if they ever encounter nicely
| formatted mail replies.
| ninjin wrote:
| I think our contexts are all different. But, to share a
| different experience, as an academic (with plenty of
| conversations involving people in industry as well each year)
| I have used interleaved and bottom-posting for decades and it
| causes confusion maybe once a year at most and mostly because
| Microsoft's online client is broken and at times does not
| even render anything below "Dear Foo," in the HTML view (got
| to give this small start up in Redmond some more time though,
| we can not expect them to implement standards that have only
| been around for over 40 years).
| Sharlin wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that most people are only dimly aware of the
| existence of the quoted part at the bottom of an email. Mail
| clients routinely hide it by default, and in most cases it's
| never needed for anything in today's email conventions. Most
| clients now group conversations to threads, and most emails
| aren't long or complex enough to require much context anyway,
| never mind the custom of interleaving quotes and replies.
|
| The vast majority people didn't yet use email back when
| bottom posting was good etiquette and top posting was
| discouraged. They're simply not aware of the concepts, or the
| controversy, at all. Even old-fashioned snail mail letters,
| for those who still remember such things, didn't usually
| include quoted passages, even though getting a reply to one's
| letter could easily take weeks if not months.
| sixtyj wrote:
| E-mail was always asynchronous communication tool.
|
| For people who like to see waving three dots in iPhone chat,
| e-mailing makes them anxious. So I understand that apology is
| quite normal.
|
| It is a sort of generational difference, imho.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Chats are ambiguous because it functions both as sync and
| async. I treat my whatsapp messages as async, but time and
| again I get heat from people because I take too long to reply,
| something I'll never feel the urge to apologize for.
| coldpie wrote:
| I see this in the opposite direction at work. I'll send
| someone a chat message after their working hours and they'll
| actually reply apologizing that can't look now and will reply
| tomorrow. Or that they're just waking up and they'll look
| later today. Yeah, that's what I expect, I'm not your boss
| asking you to come in on a Saturday. Why on earth are you
| looking at your work chat outside of your work hours anyway??
| nomagicbullet wrote:
| They could be giving you a subtle hint to not send messages
| outside of work hours.
| coldpie wrote:
| I don't know their working hours, we've got staff all
| over the globe and people work whatever hours they like.
| I have no expectation for anyone to check work
| communications outside of their working hours, and it's
| bonkers to me that people think anyone would have that
| expectation.
| prmoustache wrote:
| That's weird. When I am off, I don't read those messages
| anyway. Who would be checking at their messages AND be
| annoyed at receiving them?
| vel0city wrote:
| Reply time to instant messages is extremely context
| sensitive. If I'm having a chat catching up with an old
| friend I haven't talked with much in a while, I might take
| several hours to a day or two to write the next message. If I
| take a day or two to reply to my spouse's inquiry of "what is
| the plan for dinner tonight?" or "you need to pick up the
| kids from school today, ok?" I'll have some problems!
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Your kids getting picked up shouldn't depend on you seeing
| an instant message, that should probably be agreed upon the
| previous day. Sure, emergencies happen, in which case you
| can't really be held responsible. But if that happens more
| often than not, that's bad parenting.
|
| Or maybe your agreement with your spouse is to communicate
| over instant message about managing these daily tasks, in
| which case it's ok, but you better crank that notification
| sound all the way to 11 LOL
| vel0city wrote:
| Ok, feel free to rephrase "you need to" to "will you",
| and have the only real reason why you didn't respond be
| because you just didn't feel like responding at that
| moment. It'll still be frustrating having the other party
| just be willfully absent to the conversation.
|
| My point is, there are types of messages which are highly
| time sensitive to the point where the response is
| meaningless past a certain point, and to many in this day
| and age instant messaging is the format for such
| inquiries to be made. Sure, one could be busy and be
| unable to respond, and one should be understanding of
| that. But it the reason why my spouse was unreachable was
| because they didn't bother responding to me at that
| moment to an obviously important time critical message
| we've got some problems in our relationship to figure
| out.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > My point is, there are types of messages which are
| highly time sensitive to the point where the response is
| meaningless past a certain point
|
| Ah yes, understood. That makes total sense. In fact I was
| thinking about a practical system that could be used to
| bypass silent modes and do not disturb configs for such
| emergencies. Back when MSN was a thing you had a buzz
| button that would play an alarm, vibrate the chat window
| and steal the window focus. It was as amusing as it was
| annoying, but there are practical uses for this.
| squeefers wrote:
| written letters are asynchronous but people expected timely
| (relative to snail mail) replies even back then.
| nmcfarl wrote:
| I am pretty sure this is not true.
|
| I recall my mother's family conversing via mail in the early
| 80's - and she would write one 10 page letter a month as a
| reply (max) - that would 3 or 4 mails a year with any
| particular sibling (and probably 1 phone call - but phone
| calls to alaska were expensive, and you wouldn't say all you
| wanted to).
| randusername wrote:
| > generational difference
|
| I feel squeezed in the middle between antsy-verbose zoomer
| emailers and terse boomer emailers that hit me with ambiguous 5
| word replies or those godforsaken emojii email reacts.
|
| My decree is that 95% of emails should be three sentences
| double-spaced. 5% should be paragraphs. Hypertext is
| permissible almost entirely because of quote formatting, which
| should be used liberally so that each email is as self-
| contained as possible.
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| You do not need hypertext to prefix lines with "> ".
| Sharlin wrote:
| Verbose zoomers and super-terse boomers? I'd expect the
| opposite, if anything.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I took a day off texting to sleep and recover from an injury,
| and the woman I was seeing (in her 30s) threatened to delete
| our chat because she assume I was mad and ignoring her.
|
| She's part of a certain digital generation, and expectations
| change.
|
| A younger PM I'm working with right now emailed me twice in a
| few hours because I didn't immediately sign into their
| management platform after our 4pm meeting. Granted, that's her
| job, but the project doesn't officially start for a few more
| months.
| em-bee wrote:
| i'd try to find out what is behind the reaction of the woman
| you are seeing. threatening to break up is in itself
| unhealthy for any relationship. if my partner thinks it is ok
| to make such threats then i'd end the relationship right
| there. if we are married then the next step is marriage
| counceling.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| That's a really rigid way of thinking about it.
| Relationships are a negotiation, and if you stay in a
| committed one long enough you're going to find yourselves
| navigating some of these issues. If I'd only been seeing
| someone for a few weeks and their usual pattern was
| constant, immediate contact I'd assume there was something
| wrong. Some people tend to assume further that the problem
| is their fault. But that's a conversation you can have with
| your SO without giving them a counter-ultimatum.
| em-bee wrote:
| assuming something wrong is fine, even getting upset is
| ok, feeling hurt, and expressing that is also ok, it's a
| misunderstanding after all. these things happen. but the
| next step is to talk about it. what is wrong is to
| immediately threaten to breakup without finding out what
| the problem is.
|
| if you are sending me a message that says: answer or i'll
| delete this chat, which means break up, and i am not even
| able to see the message, let alone respond, so i have no
| clue whats going on, then i effectively learn that you
| don't trust me and that you'll assume the worst whenever
| something happens. that's a character trait that i can't
| handle. which means we are not fit to be together.
|
| you are right, as in your other comment that this depends
| on established communication patterns, and if i know that
| my partner gets anxious when i don't respond quickly
| enough then, like you suggest i'd let my partner know in
| advance. but you could also have a situation where you
| can't do that. the phone breaks, you get into an
| accident, or you are so sick or tired that you fall
| asleep before you have a chance to send a message...
|
| i would not respond with a counter-ultimatum. that's the
| thing. ultimatums should never be used in a relationship.
| breaking up is a step i would take after the
| conversation, if i come to the conclusion that my partner
| thinks it is ok to threaten me like that. i had a partner
| do that to me three times over the course of half a year.
| after the third time i had enough. i realized that this
| is part of her usual behavior, and she will continue
| doing that whenever something upsets her to much. she
| refused counseling too. so i said good bye, we are not
| fit for each other. i never threatened to leave myself. i
| tried to find out what is upsetting her and resolve it. i
| had to realize that this was part of her character and
| that i would not be able to keep going. i had no
| motivation to try to change her. that's generally futile
| anyways.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| If I did that to my wife without telling her she would
| probably assume I was avoiding her for some reason. But
| that's more a factor of how often we normally communicate,
| and if I depart from that she infers that there's something
| wrong.
| Juliate wrote:
| Everything is asynchronous but face-to-face, phone and video
| call.
|
| I cut every communication tool settings that enable online
| status or "typing..." information. It sets unreasonable
| expectations no one should have (but in contextual requests on
| the spot).
| debo_ wrote:
| > Apologizing for taking time to reply to my email is awkward and
| makes me uncomfortable.
|
| > It also puts a lot of pressure on me: what if I take more time
| than you to reply? Isn't the whole point of asynchronous
| communication to be... asynchronous? Each on its own rhythm?
|
| This one of those sentiments that makes me scratch my head. If
| this little thing makes you uncomfortable to the point that you
| need to write a blog post about it, how do you survive?
| 46493168 wrote:
| Some of us survive because we have anxiety deeply rooted in a
| fear of failure. It causes us to be perfectionists. This can
| look like success for those who hide it well.
| debo_ wrote:
| I have been hospitalized and almost died multiple times from
| stress-related disorders, so I get it. But as soon as I catch
| myself putting aspects of my health on the behaviour of other
| people -- especially for something this small -- it's time
| for me to start looking inwards.
| some_furry wrote:
| > If this little thing makes you uncomfortable to the point
| that you need to write a blog post about it, how do you
| survive?
|
| Not the author, but I'd wager it's an evolving story over many
| years. At first, you ignore it entirely. It might not even
| register at first, or if it does, it's just a barely conscious
| "huh, this interaction makes me feel weird" sort of deal. And
| you leave it be. But then _death by a thousand cuts_ later, you
| 're irritated by this habit and want to speak out against it.
| And so, you write a blog post about why it's bad or annoying or
| whatever. And then you go back to surviving another day.
| jbstack wrote:
| For me the point is that if you feel uncomfortable over
| something that is widespread and considered normal social
| etiquette, it's on _you_ to deal with feeling uncomfortable,
| and you can 't really expect everyone else to change their
| behaviour just for you.
| some_furry wrote:
| > For me the point is that if you feel uncomfortable over
| something that is widespread and considered normal social
| etiquette, it's on you to deal with feeling uncomfortable,
| and you can't really expect everyone else to change their
| behaviour just for you.
|
| Ah, the classic "fuck the neurodivergent" stance.
| jbstack wrote:
| You're taking my comment out of context. This isn't about
| neurodivergents, it's about someone who thinks everyone
| should conform to his highly detailed rules (the article
| isn't only about not apologising - he has other demands
| on structure, content, and even plaintext vs html) when
| sending him emails.
| quesera wrote:
| Please describe the alternative stance, and how it scales
| to societies and casual acquaintences.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think the poster above may have accidentally worded
| their response a little too personally, but their point
| is valid and not against neurodivergent people (or, at
| least, there is a version that is close to their argument
| that is so).
|
| It's perfectly fine to ask people to change be careful in
| their correspondence to a specific person to avoid
| certain issues.
|
| It's not fine, however, even for neuro divergent people,
| to expect social norms to change for everyone to match
| their particular preferences.
|
| If we read the original article as representing a request
| from the author to specifically not answer emails to them
| by apologizing for replying late, that's a perfectly fine
| request that anyone corresponding with them should follow
| (once they become aware of it). If we read it as a
| general recommendation to everyone to change this clear
| social norm, then it's not fine, the justification given
| (one person finds this puts some kind of pressure on
| them, and others might too) is not strong enough to
| warrant everyone else changing their behavior pre-
| emptively.
| tw85 wrote:
| No, it's a fatigue of entitled people who react
| irrationally and think society should pander to their
| psychological quirks. Or worse, those who enjoy
| manipulating others by taking offence. A reddit / bluesky
| self diagnosis of "neurodivergent" doesn't entitle one to
| be an asshole.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| He can just stop using e-mail if he has such
| disturbances. This is like somebody freaking out because
| their neighbour said hello.
|
| Or a bird chirped in a tree, or whatever triggers hackers
| to loose their mind nowadays. Maybe some branches moved
| in the wind.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| There is no set of "normal" things that a large majority of
| people all share. You can do things you consider normal
| without being a defensive asshole about it when it
| negatively affects somebody else (and vice versa, but I'm
| responding to you, not the OP).
| otterley wrote:
| Culture (and the norms that emanate from it) are a thing
| that exists. They may be localized to certain
| communities, but they're not something you can deny the
| existence of.
| jbstack wrote:
| Replace normal with common, and my original comment
| stands. In many cultures people often casually say "how
| is it going?" when they don't mean it literally and they
| are just expecting a token "good, you?" in response. Some
| people might view it as unnecessary and insincere, but
| they don't generally go around lecturing others and
| telling them not to do it. When you're faced with a
| harmless cultural behaviour like this, the polite thing
| to do is just accept it and move on with your life.
| squeefers wrote:
| does this same guy ruminate when somebody holds a door open for
| him, or when hes asked how hes doing?
| 10729287 wrote:
| In my opinion, the example of the door is not very relevant,
| because it often forces the person behind to run to catch up
| with the door so that the person in front does not wait too
| long. For my part, I hold the door as long as possible while
| walking without turning around, so it is up to the person
| behind to decide whether or not to run, without putting too
| much pressure on them.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| In business communications, I believe it's common courtesy to
| respond to emails within 24 hours. If I get blown off, or if
| somebody takes 4 days to respond to my email, my impression is
| always that my counterparty views the matter as unimportant. For
| my part, if I reply late, and if the matter is genuinely
| important, I think it's proper and fitting to include a brief
| note of apology.
|
| In email communications with friends, it varies. I'll often let
| conversations hang for a while until there's something new to
| discuss.
| squeefers wrote:
| i would suspect this flies over the OPs head.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Absolutely! The author doesn't mention what type of
| communication he means, but for business communications (in
| Belgium, where the author is from), anything over 24 hours (one
| working day) must have some explanation.
|
| It's always better to explain yourself, otherwise, it looks
| unprofessional if you reply after a week as though it's normal.
|
| Overall, the recommendations about email look very personal to
| the author and perhaps shouldn't be taken as general advice.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Maybe on defined routine processes, but otherwise your email
| has a lower priority, unless it's an urgent matter.
| Juliate wrote:
| If it's urgent, it's a phone call.
| Gud wrote:
| Not everyone is glued to their computer.
|
| I don't owe an explanation to anyone.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Not everyone is glued to their computer.
|
| That's what out-of-office automatic replies are for, which
| will include information on what business day you will be
| back, and often will also specify who is your substitute
| while you're away.
|
| It's standard practice for B2B communication.
| Gud wrote:
| It's standard practice for people who aren't out of
| office 350 days a year...
| layer8 wrote:
| "Out of office" just means that you don't access your
| work email. If that's the case for 350 days a year for
| you, then the discussion is pretty moot anyway.
| Gud wrote:
| I do access it, I just don't have time to reply to non-
| urgent email within 24 hours...
| prmoustache wrote:
| > In business communications, I believe it's common courtesy to
| respond to emails within 24 hours.
|
| Sounds funny because I only read mails when someone tell me
| about them on MSTeams.
|
| Between IM, supports tickets and jira stories I don't really
| see the point of emails anymore. If it is something that has an
| SLA tickets seem to be the way to go, if not Teams. If it is an
| urgent matter, mentioning my name or calling me will be a
| quicker way to go. Email seem to be in that weird place where
| some people still seem to want to insert invisible business
| matters in an ocean of junk and automatized mails/notifications
| you generally never subscribe yourself but ends up subscribed
| by default when given access to resources/applications.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Teams may work for your internal messages but if you deal
| with anyone outside of your own employer email is still the
| standard for communication. Not every piece of business that
| gets done fits into a ticket system.
| vel0city wrote:
| > if you deal with anyone outside of your own employer
| email is still the standard for communication
|
| I get what you're saying and agree email is almost always
| the least common denominator between two different
| organizations.
|
| On the flip side, this can really vary based on the
| relationship between two orgs and how closely they might
| work with each other. I've definitely had Teams instances
| with outside users and Slack channels shared between
| multiple orgs when there's a lot of close daily
| collaboration happening.
|
| https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/slack-shared-channels
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoftteams/communicate...
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Teams may work for your internal messages but if you deal
| with anyone outside of your own employer email is still the
| standard for communication. Not every piece of business
| that gets done fits into a ticket system.
|
| Nobody ever expect a reply within 24hour from someone
| outside of your organization, unless these terms have been
| set already that you are working on a common project with
| strict deadlines.
| j45 wrote:
| Just because one doesn't see the point doesn't mean one
| doesn't exist.
|
| Each communication tool has its strengths, namely managing
| interruptions.
|
| People using one's attention as their inbox directly with DM
| vs a when you can get to it email can be easily mismanaged.
|
| It's different for each job.
| ghaff wrote:
| I also find my SMS/iMessage increasingly polluted by
| companies that have probably discovered that their emails
| are filtered automatically or otherwise and no one responds
| to them any longer.
| jbstack wrote:
| (1) I don't have Jira, (2) I don't want to fill out a SLA
| ticket, (3) I don't use Teams, (4) I don't know your phone
| number and/or prefer to deal with things in writing.
|
| Email works because: (a) it is ubiquitous, (b) you don't have
| to pay for some proprietary software to use it, (c) you
| remain in control of your data (no IM messages suddenly
| disappearing), (d) you have a permanent, local, copy of what
| was said in writing, (e) it's often the standard court-
| recognised form of communication, other than post, for things
| that matter legally (e.g. sending notices).
|
| That's not to say that email isn't without many defects. But
| it's still the best we have for many work-related use cases.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > (1) I don't have Jira, (2) I don't want to fill out a SLA
| ticket, (3) I don't use Teams, (4) I don't know your phone
| number and/or prefer to deal with things in writing.
|
| You don't know my email address either so that's ok!
| alistairSH wrote:
| Primarily, email gets used for customer-facing comms (they
| aren't in Jira). It also gets used for lots of system
| notifications that could probably be moved to Slack, but
| inertia is a bitch and they remain in email.
| j45 wrote:
| It can be common courtesy as long as the other party is not
| feeling entitled to one's time and attention.
| otikik wrote:
| Different people and different work environments have different
| rules.'
|
| I view my email once per week. If you need an immediate answer
| from me, I expect you to send me a slack/chat/pagerduty
| warning, even one that says "I sent you an email, I need answer
| by tomorrow".
| lukan wrote:
| If you communicate your expectation visibly, then this works.
| Otherwise not so much.
| jbstack wrote:
| Even if they communicate visibly it doesn't always work. I
| don't use slack / pagerduty (not even sure what that is)
| and I'm not going to install or set up an account on some
| random proprietary service just to meet the demands of one
| email recipient. It might be fine in certain contexts (e.g.
| team members or friends/family who all use the same
| communication apps) but it breaks down when you're
| communicating with arbitrary members of the public.
| otikik wrote:
| Exactly. But it also works the other way. If you expect
| people to read your emails within 24 hours, make it very
| clear that that's a business need. Otherwise some of them
| will not.
| arccy wrote:
| 24 hours -> 1 business day
|
| don't expect replies over weekends and holidays
| coldtea wrote:
| > _If I get blown off, or if somebody takes 4 days to respond
| to my email, my impression is always that my counterparty views
| the matter as unimportant_
|
| Usually it is unimportant, and the other side is just wasting
| their time.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's more like two business days in the academia, and only if a
| simple response is enough. Complex questions often take longer,
| because coming up with an answer may take an hour or two of
| uninterrupted time.
|
| And if it's a cold email requesting something beyond a reply,
| and you don't have an existing business relationship with the
| sender, there is no expectation that you respond. An endless
| stream of requests from less reputable entities is an
| unavoidable fact of academic life. Such requests often go
| directly to the spam folder, as people have collectively
| decided that they are spam and trained the spam filters
| accordingly. Even if you think your request is legitimate, it
| can be indistinguishable from spam.
| OJFord wrote:
| Hear such mixed things on that though, often it's oh
| academics _love_ to hear someone wants to read their paper,
| just email them, they 'll be only too happy to provide you
| with a pdf.
|
| So I tried it once; no reply. (A month or two after it was
| published too, not something that might've been difficult to
| dig up.) Probably straight to spam.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > In business communications, I believe it's common courtesy to
| respond to emails within 24 hours.
|
| Different stroke for different folks, but I'm still very much
| in the paradigm where email is more like a letter in the mail,
| not like a text message, IM, or "please return my call"
| voicemail. [0]
|
| Of course I recognize that email is often used for time-
| sensitive matters (like scheduling events), but any time I see
| an email that is likely to require multiple timely backs-and-
| forths I'll try to move the conversation to a more suitable
| medium.
|
| [0] Here I'm referring to solicited emails sent by humans or
| transactional emails triggered directly by a human interaction.
| In practice our email inboxes also serve as a general
| "notifications hub" for all sorts of things including recurring
| events ("remember to pay your bill") and, of course,
| unsolicited junk.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There are only two suitable mediums: E-Mail or phone call.
| ctpmpse wrote:
| async vs sync
| miyoji wrote:
| If you try to contact me with a _phone call_ , you might as
| well send your message into outer space. You'll have better
| luck getting a response from aliens.
|
| 99% of incoming calls to my phone are spam. I won't pick up
| an unknown number unless someone has already contacted me
| and told me to be expecting a phone call, or it's a call
| from someone I already know (people I already know don't
| call me either).
|
| That is to say, your mileage may vary on what counts as a
| "suitable medium".
| nkrisc wrote:
| Used to be that people had phones at the desk at work and
| a voicemail inbox. In a business situation I would expect
| most people to be reachable by phone.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I haven't had a phone at work for the last 7 years.
| jll29 wrote:
| This reminds me: when people insist on having a real
| phone call in an email, it could be something that they
| don't like to put in writing. So it's a good practice to
| ask what the topic of the phone call will be so that you
| can join it prepared.
|
| If it indeed is something that you feel might be fishy, I
| further recommend the following: write a summary of what
| was discussed and send your summary to the people on the
| call as "meeting minutes -- 2026-02-11" (make this a
| habit, and always say "I do this routinely to remember
| what was agreed"). This can easily avoid you being
| trapped by dubious propsals or being unwittingly on the
| wrong side of the law.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If you're not reachable neither by phone nor by e-mail,
| then it's assumed you want to be left alone.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't even have a phone at work. Haven't for years.
| RupertSalt wrote:
| Have you routinely received letters or bills from
| bureaucrats?
|
| I can tell you that those banks, government agencies, and
| hospitals know how to backdate letters, postmark them like
| clockwork, and land in my mailbox on a Friday at close of
| business on a 3-day weekend, just to jam us up and narrow any
| deadline that may exist.
|
| Even a hand-delivered notice from the landlady shows up at
| 6:01pm when the office is already closed. I guarantee that
| you will be helpless to respond in a timely fashion.
|
| It has been suggested that "bankers hours" and 9-5 office
| hours were originated specifically to jam up the working man,
| who needed to be in the mines or on the factory floor during
| those hours. If a bank actually wanted to serve working
| people, they would be open on weekends. Traditionally it was
| not something your wife or kids could proxy, if they did not
| drive or have authorization, but the single working man was
| doubly screwed in these situations.
|
| This year I also have the experience of very premature
| "billing notices" sent to my email and text and every other
| place, where the bureaucrats are counting on impatience to
| pay a bill far too early, before it is due, luring you in
| with ambiguous wording. People today are warning "do not
| comply in advance" and I am observing this maxim with health
| care billing in particular.
| jstanley wrote:
| I'm confused, are you upset about receiving letters that
| don't give you enough time to act, or that give you too
| much time to act?
| RupertSalt wrote:
| yes
| RupertSalt wrote:
| It's squeezing from both ends.
|
| If a bureaucracy sends out a thing that requires
| followup/action, and it arrives right before the
| sidewalks are rolled up, then the citizen is sort of
| flailing for days. Might even forget to act at 9am on
| Tuesday. Government websites include _a lot of scheduled
| maintenance_. Also, that letter they wrote will be dated
| at least 10 days before you received it. I carefully
| staple all correspondence to the envelope with postmarks.
|
| If someone induces me to pay a bill 60-90 days early,
| that is my loss and their gain. Money in my bank is
| working for me, available, perhaps earning interest.
| Money in their bank is sunk. For this reason and others,
| it can be an error to pay your bills too early.
|
| I recently ordered on Christmas Day from a catalog. They
| charged my card right away. They still haven't delivered
| some of the items. Vendors shouldn't be taking your
| payment until the stuff is shipped. Businesses won't pay
| invoices until the goods/services are received and
| verified!
|
| As I said, bureaucracies run like clockwork, and they
| will always act at the right time and date. It will
| disadvantage the best of us.
|
| Any office worker knows the difference in character
| between the email that arrived at 9am on Monday, vs. the
| memo sent at 11am on Wednesday, or the phone call coming
| in at 4:59pm on Friday...
| senko wrote:
| > If a bank actually wanted to serve working people, they
| would be open on weekends.
|
| You do know that people also work in banks, right?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Are you trying to say that banks can't be open on the
| weekends because then bank employees would have to work
| weekends? Much like _any_ business that operates on the
| weekends? They would have time off during the week and
| wouldn 't have the issue that people working Mon-Fri have
| because they could go to the bank on their day off on
| Tuesday or whatever.
| senko wrote:
| > Are you trying to say that banks can't be open on the
| weekends because then bank employees would have to work
| weekends? Much like any business that operates on the
| weekends?
|
| I'm saying there's a reason not all businesses (or
| government institutions) work 996[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
| RupertSalt wrote:
| It's about white collar versus blue collar.
|
| White collars have the luxury of limited hours, resting
| on the weekends, and being able to take time off work
| when they have an appointment or obligation.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| This is absolutely true. When I worked as at a
| restaurant, the mantra from management was: "You got time
| to lean, you got time to clean." I've worked a lot of
| blue-collar jobs before making my way into office work.
| Blue collar workers will get chided for pulling out their
| phone. I'm posting this comment to HN on either side of a
| call that came in while I was reading the thread.
|
| In my first real office job, I grew anxious when someone
| from down the hall came and conversed with my office-mate
| for ten minutes. We had all this work that needed to be
| addressed! I'm obviously acclimated to office culture
| now; I'm just trying to underscore the difference in work
| culture for those who may not have worked in physical
| labor environments. The people working those jobs aren't
| even an afterthought to many people (which I can attest
| from having dealt with people who mistreat workers).
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've gotten the normal stuff via mail: bills, credit card
| stuff, DMV, the occasional jury summons. And I've also
| dealt extensively with U.S. immigration, which often
| requires numerous exchanges via USPS.
|
| And all of these things generally work fine with the
| assumption that response times will be a couple of days,
| plus the couple of days in transit.
|
| I can't say I recall ever encountering mail with a strict
| deadline very near to when I received it. (Usually the
| frustration is the opposite: I wish things could move a lot
| faster than they do.)
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > Different stroke for different folks, but I'm still very
| much in the paradigm where email is more like a letter in the
| mail, not like a text message, IM, or "please return my call"
| voicemail.
|
| I moved from a company that operated under that paradigm
| (Slack was the primary mode of internal comms) to one that
| treats email as the primary mode of comms. It was a minor
| challenge to start watching my inbox and keep it at zero-
| unread (something I don't care about at all in my personal
| emails). Feels natural to me now when I'm in work-mode.
| baubino wrote:
| My rule is: 2 business days if I know you, 2-4 business days if
| I don't know you but you are offering something of actual value
| to me, up to infinity for everyone else. I only offer an
| apology for the first group.
| the_arun wrote:
| Also Async doesn't mean delayed forever.
| charles_f wrote:
| It's like everything else, it depends
|
| If I ask a quote, get it, and answer only 2w later, I will
| probably apologize. If someone sends me a quote unprovoked,
| they shouldn't have any expectations of getting an answer, and
| if I answer even late, I won't apologize.
|
| If my boss or people working on my project send me an email to
| get a status on something and it takes me a week to answer,
| I'll apologize- even if that's because I was busy on something
| more important. If a random colleague asks me for something
| unrelated with my direct responsibilities, similarly I'll get
| to it if I get to it when I get to it, and I dont think they
| should have expectations of receiving an answer, so I won't
| apologize
| MrDarcy wrote:
| This was previously true but no longer. Anyone who sends an
| email instead of a DM for something requiring a 24 hour turn
| around bears the responsibility for any resulting delay in
| 2026.
| Gud wrote:
| I am a site test engineer. I am also the primary contact for
| site test related questions internally for our factory and from
| customer and colleagues.
|
| If your question needs a answer within 24 hours , give me a
| call and I will do my best to answer. If you send me an email,
| without any clear urgency, I will respond when I have time.
| Typically within a week.
| bix6 wrote:
| 24 hours is ridiculous. I spent over 3 hours replying to emails
| yesterday and didn't get through them all. And now I'm even
| more backed up on projects.
| antasvara wrote:
| I think this really depends on your role. I don't get enough
| emails in a day to require 3 hours of replies.
|
| More generally, though, the response can be as simple as "We
| have received this email; the request will take some time,
| here's roughly when you can expect an update."
| bix6 wrote:
| I've tried this but then I'm under pressure to get someone
| a response by a self imposed arbitrary deadline.
|
| I think the cultural norm is to respond as quickly as
| possible. Realistically that is so challenging.
| swat535 wrote:
| Everyone thinks that their inquiries are urgent, top priority.
| That's not always the case, it maybe urgent to you, but not to
| the other person.
|
| If something is critical, you can communicate via other means:
| phone calls, SMS, slack, etc.. and even then, there's no
| guarantee you will get a response.
|
| In business context, I lean the other way, tend to give all
| parties as much leg room as possible.
|
| I think The Eisenhower Method is a great fit for
| prioritization.
| dwedge wrote:
| Airbnb recently sent me a terms change email that doesnt
| apply for six months and I dont use it anyway, but email
| headers set it to urgent and important.
| projektfu wrote:
| This must be why so many spammers now have automation set up to
| send me the first spam, then a second a day later asking if I
| got the first one, then a third to ask if I am still interested
| or willing to let their exciting opportunity to pass by. And
| then restarting the pattern in a month or so.
| jdboyd wrote:
| I think that for many cases that should be modified from 24
| hours to by the end of the next business day. I feel no
| obligation to reply on a Sunday to someone who emails me on
| Saturday or late Friday. They can wait until Monday.
| graemep wrote:
| You are conflating important with urgent. Something might be
| very important, but not urgent.
|
| I might be slower to reply to something important because I
| need the time to get the reply right.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Yeah, dude, but sometimes I do consider the matter unimportant,
| and it's a useful signal to send to the other person.
|
| Your important might not be mine, and that's perfectly fine.
| Professionals negotiate that difference, instead of
| unilaterally deciding the other is blowing them off.
| tobr wrote:
| This would be an absolutely savage way to follow up on an email
| you never received a reply to three years ago.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Most people do expect timely replies to emails. If you act like
| taking days to respond to an email is normal, people will get
| very upset with you.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I won't. Days is ok. For non-urgent emails, I would only be
| slightly annoyed if it's been more than a week, and I'll then
| send a reminder.
|
| It's ok. I know you're busy, take your time and respond at your
| convenience.
| Sharlin wrote:
| In most contexts days is perfectly normal, and expecting a
| faster reply, especially without explaining why it's urgent, is
| considered impolite. This includes all the cases where the
| _job_ of the recipient is not literally "reply to e-mails
| ASAP".
| nicbou wrote:
| Then be upset. Nowhere did I agree to reply to emails quickly,
| if at all. Your expectations, your feelings, your problem.
| brushfoot wrote:
| What an unpleasant attitude. People have emotions. If they're
| apologizing, maybe they feel bad. Accept it and get on with your
| day. A punctilious email etiquette isn't going to improve
| anything.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I actually really liked the post. I'm often prone to
| apologizing, thinking that it's a social expectation, and the
| post made me smile and relax a bit, thinking to myself "oh,
| maybe it's not that important, and it'll be ok if I don't".
| j45 wrote:
| Responding too quickly to emails is the same as responding too
| quickly to IMs, it will often invite more responding.
| bell-cot wrote:
| That depends on context, and how you phrase the reply.
| jjice wrote:
| I don't know, it seems pretty light-hearted. If they sent this
| directly to someone in response to an email, then I may agree,
| but since it's more of just an opinion blog piece, I find this
| to be a good outlet for thoughts to share without really
| impacting anyone.
| 10729287 wrote:
| Well, to be honest, for a lot of people, apologizing for late
| answer is more a social convention or a reflex than real
| apologies.
|
| The same for : "How are you ?", "I hope this email finds you
| well" or worse than everything, Emails Greetings embedded into
| the signature.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And please remove the multi-paragraph legal disclaimers from
| your .sig. They are meaningless and annoying.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| The author does not seem to be advocating in favor of
| punctilious etiquette so much as simply _getting the point_.
| projektfu wrote:
| I agree that the apologies tend to make one a little
| uncomfortable. This is because people do not simply say, "I am
| sorry I did not have time to write sooner. Here is my
| response", but instead say, "I would have written but my child
| was sick, etc.," so you feel the need to respond to that, and
| feel bad for having bothered them.
|
| Almost nobody writes, "I am sorry I was scrolling Twitter and
| Hacker News while ignoring my e-mail. Fortunately, I have
| stopped and now can respond!"
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I write no more than either, "Apologies for the delayed
| response," or "Apologies for the delayed response, I've been
| out of the office unexpectedly." Very business-like. Tone
| neutral. Easy to digest and move on.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think there is a cultural gap. He mention not only
| apologizing but giving explanations.
|
| For instance my observation is that people in the USA will tend
| to give you a lot of unrequested information like all their
| health/medical problems or the sports games of their kid and
| what not. People in europe seems to be more private unless they
| are talking with very close coworker they would consider as
| friends.
| abcde666777 wrote:
| Apologies for this comment!
| mda wrote:
| Such a weird thing to say, if this makes you uncomfortable,
| imagine how uncomfortable it makes the other side reading this.
|
| It is common courtesy, not a big deal.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Common courtesies often have a ratchet effect, only increasing
| in expectations over time, and we need a correction every once
| in a while to avoid sinking into the expectation abyss.
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to
| be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the
| bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and
| uninterruptible concentration."
|
| -Donald Knuth
| j45 wrote:
| In that case, emails like IM's can be batched together during a
| 30 minute block twice a day.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| That's what he does except it's every 6 mo
|
| https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
| atmosx wrote:
| At that time made sense. It's clear what he is trying to say:
| "I won't engage every excited programmer who wants to know this
| or that via email, like others tend to do even for little
| things".
|
| In 2026 email is the most time-respecting communication medium
| other than a classic, physical letter.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Knuth is such a wonderful guy, his books are amazing
| nicbou wrote:
| What a clever sentence!
| cbondurant wrote:
| I feel like the lag-time of communication was an important
| component of older forms of communication that has been lost.
| That's not to say that fast communication isn't a boon to
| society, of course. Only that slower communication gives you more
| flexibility in how you respond, and more time to think about what
| your response should be.
|
| When the main form of long distance communication was the postal
| system, and letters took days to travel from sender to receiver,
| you could easily wait days, if not weeks, to draft up your reply
| and mail it out. The recipient on the other end wouldn't even be
| able to discern the difference between your delay and the delay
| from the postal network itself. It had some in-built slack.
|
| When the only phones were landlines, if someone called you and
| you knew you were in a bad mood, the kind of bad mood that would
| invariably make you say something stupid, you could just not pick
| up! There were plenty of common, understandable reasons someone
| wouldn't be available to answer their landline. Then they could
| leave you a message, and you could call back when you mood
| improved again. Again, there was slack built into the system.
|
| Now there's this cultural expectation that puts far more
| attention on your reaction speed. A text message with no
| immediate response _could_ just be them not seeing it
| immediately... But actually no! Now we have read receipts too!
| You can 't even pretend to have not seen it yet while you think
| of your reply. Some platforms even have the little "currently
| typing" indicator tell them how long you've spent drafting and
| re-drafting whatever message you ended up sending. A panopticon
| of communication. Now there's no slack. Any person anywhere in
| the world could try and get a hold of you with the same
| expectation of immediacy that a face-to-face conversation would
| supply.
|
| Now of course, not every single person I might text, call, or
| send an email to, will have the same expectations for what is an
| appropriate degree of responsiveness. But, (speaking from my
| personal experience) I am absolutely miserable at reading that
| from social clues. I am left having to assume that, in the
| absence of some clear indicator to the contrary, whoever I am
| writing to will actually have rather strict expectations, and
| that allowing myself to be lax may very well give them a terrible
| opinion of me. (Though, the degree to which their opinion of me
| actually _matters_ is a different question entirely!)
| quesera wrote:
| > _I am left having to assume that, in the absence of some
| clear indicator to the contrary, whoever I am writing to will
| actually have rather strict expectations_
|
| This is self-defeating. You have the option (and I recommend
| it) to intentionally adopt the opposite assumption:
|
| Zero communication is urgent, unless explicitly described as
| such.
|
| It might be appropriate to make exceptions for certain people.
| Parents, partners, children. _Maybe_ some work people during a
| crunch. _Maybe_ some friends going through difficult times.
| dleeftink wrote:
| And still, we apologised ('I hope this find you well' and so
| on). It's cruft, it's slack, and it's _social_. We need some
| anchors to hang our message on. We know when it 's necessary
| and when it isn't, and by breaking conventions we relay intent
| ('sorry not sorry').
| qwertytyyuu wrote:
| Reminding you of context is just weird, just scroll down an read
| you previous email
| j45 wrote:
| Reminding of context can be useful to summarize your
| understanding and what you are responding to.
|
| Kind of like LLMs.
| RupertSalt wrote:
| This may be more of a "me problem" than a "them problem".
|
| I often have the experience that people apologize for being slow
| to respond to me. Whether they're on the phone, at a counter in
| person, or whatever. Sometimes they say "oh dear, this computer
| is so slow today!" or "please bear with me while I check this..."
| but many times it is a very pointed and pre-emptive statement
| that they cannot respond or comply with my request immediately,
| that it may take X number of hours or days or something.
|
| I made a special request to a vendor last year, and the CSR said
| "oh gosh, we need to reach out to the manufacturer, in Europe,
| and you know how supply chains are these days... and..." and I
| literally said "no problem" and eventually, they did not even
| charge me for the item when it came in, months later. Likewise
| the dry cleaner always seems to protest that they cannot finish
| in time and can we please push back the deadline, but I feel like
| they are trying to shirk my business because they're overwhelmed,
| too.
|
| And I've come to believe that this is mostly the result of me
| approaching with impatience and anxiety. I often reach a desk
| while breathless and make my requests more like demands with the
| utmost of urgency. I am not, in fact, that impatient, but I give
| that impression and people believe that I would be disappointed
| if they take too long. But I do tend to interrupt and distract
| people if they are trying to collect their thoughts, or figure
| something out.
|
| My last supervisor used to do this all the time. Practically
| every email and every voicemail was followed up with apology for
| being slow. And I really think that he was very gently telling me
| not to be so impatient and anxious.
|
| But also, there really is a business standard for prompt replies.
| If someone goes out-of-office, they are usually expected to put
| up an "OOO autoreply" that will tell you when they're returning.
| Because it really is business etiquette to respond promptly, or
| reset expectations by explain why you'll be late.
| jcmfernandes wrote:
| I'll continue apologizing. I'm very sorry, though.
| networked wrote:
| "Sorry, not sorry I'm sorry."
| walthamstow wrote:
| I don't know where the author is from but this goes dead against
| common courtesy in the UK for sure, and probably similar places
| like Canada and Japan as well. In Japan you might expect the
| apology to be longer than the email content.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Thank you. I logged in to say almost exactly that. I was raised
| with very different cultural norms that are hard to remove. At
| times, I do come across as overly apologetic based on nothing
| more than, from my upbringing perspective, being polite.
| alistairSH wrote:
| No idea if I'm normal or not (based in the US, with a British
| family), but if I miss an email by a few days/weeks, I'll just
| say "sorry for the delay" and jump right into the actual
| content. And on the recipient side, I don't expect even that.
| If it was critical, I would have used Slack (or sent a follow-
| up email if it was something to an external party).
| projektfu wrote:
| GOD: Oh, don't grovel. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's
| people grovelling.
|
| ARTHUR: Sorry.
|
| GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I talk to someone it's
| sorry this, and, forgive me that, and, I'm not worthy.
| d--b wrote:
| People who get so annoyed by other people's habits should really
| work on themselves rather than writing long blog posts about why
| others should bend to their own world view.
|
| Or at least make it funny.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Is it worse to apologize to one who doesn't want you to do so, or
| to not apologize to one who _does_ want you to?
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Pascal's email wager.
| reconnecting wrote:
| The author is Belgian. But the post is not about how to handle
| business emails in Belgium, or in general, it's about the
| author's own preferences in written communication.
|
| I don't understand why everyone below is discussing how a person
| treats his own personal emails.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| You can't really put a strong opinion on the internet, have
| someone share it on a forum, and expect people not to discuss
| it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I can't for the life of me understand why people think it's OK to
| send and even expect plaintext email in 2026. There's so much
| content that requires formatting and non-Unicode support in order
| to make sense. Formatted text, lists, in-line graphs or images,
| tables, equations or other mathematical formulae, all of these
| benefit from a controlled layout that plaintext just doesn't
| offer or can barely approximate. Why would you limit your email
| communication like this?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If your e-mail is only text, then it should be plaintext. The
| receiver knows better than you what kind of formatting she
| would like to read it in.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The definition of "text" itself is quite vague. Is a code
| sample text? What about a series of code samples intercalated
| with common language descriptions? What about a numbered
| list? What about a poem?
|
| Also, just because I send some text as HTML doesn't prevent
| in any way the receiver from formatting that however they
| want. I'm just adding some display hints, that their email
| client may or may not ignore.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What about it? Your e-mail composer will tell you when you
| put something in your message which isn't plaintext and
| offer to convert your message to HTML for you to keep
| writing it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You were claiming earlier that one shouldn't add
| formatting to their email, such as _emphasizing using
| italics_ as it is the recipient who should decide how to
| format the email text. This is a completely different
| discussion from whether email that does happen to only
| require plain text should be sent as plain text or HTML.
| frou_dh wrote:
| On the off-chance I ever do reply to some of the months/years old
| things that I've never replied to, then I will surely include an
| apology, because it's definitely rude what I've done.
|
| I don't think many people in the real world worship the sanctity
| of the "Asynchronous Communication" principle _above all else_.
| Maybe the author is the 1 /1000 that does.
| kqr wrote:
| I get a couple of cold emails a week and I like to be as helpful
| as I can when people have entrusted me with their
| opinions/thoughts/concerns/questions. I also often don't find the
| time to respond until weeks or months later, at which point an
| apology seems reasonable.
|
| I do like the idea of asking the sender to reply a few
| weeks/months later.
| grvdrm wrote:
| My simple route for handling slow replies:
|
| 1. Quick email saying "acknowledge, will work on a reply with
| estimate target date"
|
| 2. Proper reply ideally by target.
|
| Guilty as charged.
| tristor wrote:
| As someone who is often late replying to emails and feels
| compelled to put in an apology, it's because my experience is
| that most of the folks emailing me (that aren't cold emails, e.g.
| things related to actual work/activities) are generally expecting
| a reply within one or two business days, so when it takes me a
| month to get back to them a brief apology is in order. The
| apology isn't because I feel I've done something wrong, per se,
| it's because I know that my timeliness didn't meet their
| expectations and they may have had to move forward without my
| input. Sometimes that's fine, sometimes I'm an SME that they need
| input from and they may have been waiting and my lack of reply
| was a blocking action.
|
| The quantity of apologies I write in email replies is directly
| correlated to how overworked I am from existing in a reality
| where the existence of unproven tooling causes more work to be
| put on my plate without any realistic avenues to manage it. When
| everything is urgent, it can be impolite to be explicit about
| your priorities, but waiting to reply implicitly makes the point
| that something else was more important, and that is something
| which has political consequences, especially in business.
| Ultimately, like any element of etiquette, it's about smoothing
| over the rough edges so we can all get along and to assuage any
| feelings that the other person may have that they got stiffed.
|
| I wish things worked the way the author thinks things work, and
| maybe it does in the world of academia or wherever this person is
| insulated from the consequences of late-stage capitalism and the
| gnat-like attention span that social media has inculcated into
| the global population. But in the business world, especially in
| the US, and especially in 2025 onward, there is an expectation
| that every individual person can do the job of a team of 6, and
| that responses need to be done with urgency to every missive.
| That's clearly an unrealistic and unfair expectation, but because
| all of us want to avoid being starving and homeless, we do our
| best to meet that expectation anyway, hence why burnout is
| epidemic and we all hate the current timeline.
| Juliate wrote:
| Lots of opinions either way. What's peculiar is the disconnect in
| some arguments here.
|
| If you are serious and down to business, taking into
| consideration the cultural bit over the efficiency or value of
| the relationship is backwards; apart from taking hints about
| manners and future expectations of communication with your
| correspondent.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Apologizing for replying late to an email is common practice
| between colleagues in business, especially if your late reply has
| blocked that person from doing their job. I don't know who this
| Ploum guy is, or why he has a nickname, or why French Wikipedia
| seems to think he's a noteworthy software developer, but I hope
| for France's sake he isn't actually as influential as he thinks,
| because this could be disastrous for French-English business
| communication.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| Thank you!
| nicbou wrote:
| I don't think that people are entitled to a quick reply, or any
| reply at all. Sure, a quick reply is courteous, but not at all an
| obligation.
| heyitsdaad wrote:
| You are talking to a human and they have feelings.
|
| They feel guilty for not answering sooner and they are letting
| that known. It makes life beautiful.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Old fashioned email etiquette and "netiquette" favored brevity
| and omission of pleasantries (and trimming quoted messages, etc.)
| because people were reading on 300 baud dial-up and it made the
| difference between taking 5 seconds to load your message or maybe
| a minute or more.
|
| It's largely irrelevant for any technical reason today, but the
| old greybeards still cling to it (I'm one of them).
| themafia wrote:
| > Apologizing for taking time to reply to my email is awkward and
| makes me uncomfortable.
|
| Get over it. No one is doing it for your benefit. They're
| providing a secondary signal about their own workload. Just
| ignore it if you cannot make use of it.
| skobes wrote:
| I mean, it's also an attentional commitment for me to remember
| your idiosyncratic apology-preferences. So I might continue
| apologizing for replying late to your email, unless you convince
| me that _everyone_ doesn't like this...
| Peacefulz wrote:
| I wish I could convince my friends online to fall back on email.
| So many times the "watering holes" have changed, and I've lost
| some valuable contacts in the shuffle.
| arkmm wrote:
| Sorry Ploum, just getting a chance to read this now and comment.
| Great insights!
| pickleRick243 wrote:
| Who keeps linking this guy's posts? I don't think I've agreed
| with a single one of his takes.
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