Private sector people - do people at your co send emails during off hours? A number of the business clients I serve do

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My last two old company we never used emails for work deliverables. It be either Jira or Service Now ticketing system.

There are SLAs to respond. Failure to meet SLAs on a regular basis impacts your raise and bonus.

So the Hot Potato game was very rampant. I often send out a pile of requests or respond on Fridays between 5 pm and 630 pm and I also jump back on Sunday night around 9pm and see if any one responded and do it again. I was king of late nights.

And Slack dont get me started I love Slack, but trouble with Slack it is channels and in channels everyone can see the slack. So if you are slacked and dont respond everyone in the channel sees.

Both jobs Forbidden to assign work or ask questions or answer questions in an email or text as they wanted a record for everyone. Slack is great with AI so I can query to see if answered before and ex-employees slacks stay forwever too.

All deliverables in Jira or Service not for all to see even if left.

And Google Docs they see your activity and they can edit it anytime and your get alerted.

Both companies did not really have standard work hours so to speak. So I know you people are old as dirt but lets say a young person is going to a concert or club Sunday night and wants to sleep in Monday they will get most of Monday work done on Sunday. If a old fart like me wants to go to beach Friday afternoon I will bang out some work late Thursday night.

My phone of course had Slack, Jira, Google, Email 24/7 and my work mac or laptop was in my office plugged in and open 24/7. If I was up at 2 am and could not sleep of course I would jump on line. If asleep or course I would not jump on line.

This all sounds insanely painful and stupid. Did you work for an IT support (like help desk) type place? That's the only place I've heard of that has "tickets" like this.

[Anonymous]

I send emails whenever I send them. It’s not a phone call or a message on teams. I’m on EST and much of my team is on PST. Then we have a lot of overseas offices. Time is irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

I’m on EST and much of my team is on PST.

EDT and PDT.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Someone will ask to meet at, say, 3pm EST, and I have to clarify that the person actually meant EDT because this is summer and we use daylight time now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I’m on EST and much of my team is on PST.

EDT and PDT.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Someone will ask to meet at, say, 3pm EST, and I have to clarify that the person actually meant EDT because this is summer and we use daylight time now.

Omg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My last two old company we never used emails for work deliverables. It be either Jira or Service Now ticketing system.

There are SLAs to respond. Failure to meet SLAs on a regular basis impacts your raise and bonus.

So the Hot Potato game was very rampant. I often send out a pile of requests or respond on Fridays between 5 pm and 630 pm and I also jump back on Sunday night around 9pm and see if any one responded and do it again. I was king of late nights.

And Slack dont get me started I love Slack, but trouble with Slack it is channels and in channels everyone can see the slack. So if you are slacked and dont respond everyone in the channel sees.

Both jobs Forbidden to assign work or ask questions or answer questions in an email or text as they wanted a record for everyone. Slack is great with AI so I can query to see if answered before and ex-employees slacks stay forwever too.

All deliverables in Jira or Service not for all to see even if left.

And Google Docs they see your activity and they can edit it anytime and your get alerted.

Both companies did not really have standard work hours so to speak. So I know you people are old as dirt but lets say a young person is going to a concert or club Sunday night and wants to sleep in Monday they will get most of Monday work done on Sunday. If a old fart like me wants to go to beach Friday afternoon I will bang out some work late Thursday night.

My phone of course had Slack, Jira, Google, Email 24/7 and my work mac or laptop was in my office plugged in and open 24/7. If I was up at 2 am and could not sleep of course I would jump on line. If asleep or course I would not jump on line.

This all sounds insanely painful and stupid. Did you work for an IT support (like help desk) type place? That's the only place I've heard of that has "tickets" like this.

Everyone on company including CEO. In my 2.5 years I sent out a total two emails and I think got 2 emails and zero phone calls. We did not communicate via phone or text. And ever meeting was recorded and any deliverables assigned in tracking tool. I had jira roadmaps for everything.

Those KPIs and SLAs were tough. In fact of work not tracked no one wanted to do as you got no credit.

[Anonymous]

Yes, we send our emails at all hours. I don’t chat people off hours unless we have a very established friendly relationship and we both know we don’t have to respond til morning.

I don’t like using schedule send because things can happen between when you schedule it and send it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we send our emails at all hours. I don’t chat people off hours unless we have a very established friendly relationship and we both know we don’t have to respond til morning.

I don’t like using schedule send because things can happen between when you schedule it and send it.

This is a big deal. I’ve had situations change so my email looks redundant or even wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we send our emails at all hours. I don’t chat people off hours unless we have a very established friendly relationship and we both know we don’t have to respond til morning.

I don’t like using schedule send because things can happen between when you schedule it and send it.

This is a big deal. I’ve had situations change so my email looks redundant or even wrong.

?? You know you can go in and revise it, right??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Omg turn on DND.

It’s 2025, it’s not my job to make sure your email is not arriving during dinner time. E-mail. It’s not a phone call. It’s not even a text. It’s the most non urgent communication imaginable. People work all hours now, for flexibility not necessarily urgency or long hours.

Op. This is why we have tools to delay delivery. Look, it it’s the old guy in finance who still has his admin help set up his meetings, fine. But these are tech guys who have every tool imaginable to streamline their work. They shouldn’t need to send emails at midnight.

Good lord, op. You can’t control other people only your response to them.

OP, you are conflating two things. You ASKED US if it's normal. Yes it's normal to send emails any and all times. I think you see the consensus. It's on the receiver to control their workday.

THEN you said it's against the rules at YOUR company. Well, great. Follow the rules at your company. Stop arguing with us.

Huh? This wasn’t op

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we send our emails at all hours. I don’t chat people off hours unless we have a very established friendly relationship and we both know we don’t have to respond til morning.

I don’t like using schedule send because things can happen between when you schedule it and send it.

This is a big deal. I’ve had situations change so my email looks redundant or even wrong.

?? You know you can go in and revise it, right??

Why create a mess to correct? Not efficient. Send current emails when they’re current

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental issue is probably that OP has company does have a thing called urgent emails. He is expected to respond to those at all hours.

They should transition to a modern technology like teams or texting and leave the asynchronous email for non-urgent matters, since it has a much higher volume

But is he actually expected to respond? It doesn't sound like he's having trouble differentiating between what's urgent and what isn't. And if he is, that's a lot easier to solve than getting people to stop sending emails when they want to.

Op here, fwiw I'm a woman and fairly senior at my co. I suspect a lot of the people answering don't appreciate that I work in a very heavy tech world (so no, it's not that I don't know how to use email or understand it can be sent whenever, and of course we use Teams and dozens of other technologies for efficiencies, both front end and back end) and that as a senior person, there is no way I would ever set a 'do not disturb' on my email other than if I was legitimately out of the country on a personal vacation (and even then, I would monitor). It would be embarrassing to set a DND; it is just not done at any level above admin. I do work across other time zones, so yes, if I get an email from someone in LA or in Europe, of course I know we are on different times, and those are not really what I'm complaining about. It is that these *local* tech people often send emails outside of work time, and too often for little stuff. But of course I don't always know it's little (and very often, I haven't thought about whatever it is there asking about in days) so I have to spend time thinking about it, or trying to find out some background. That's the primary issue. Our HR has reminded people not to do this (also because for admin staff, they might then be entitled to overtime) but some of these guys insist, and again, these are sophisticated technologists, they know how to work emails and other communication tools.

Also, as far as the people referencing asynchronous communication... of course its fine but it has to be done properly or else its considered bad form and inefficient. This is a known problem/issue at sophisticated, well run companies. As example, you don't ping someone on Teams and say 'hey Beth, do you have a minute?' (disruptive- use my calendar and/or also tell me what it is you want to talk about so we can be productive) or "Hi Joe, I have a question" (same issue). And you don't send emails during off hours (when you are on the same time zone) unless its important or unless you have specifically said 'Beth, detail detail detail info/question... and this can wait until X."

Understand now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand the panic over receiving an email in off hours. It’s inherently asynchronous communication. You’re expected to respond when you’re available.

Op here. No, it’s not clear. We are not supposed to send emails outside normal hours (with unwritten rule about an hour or so before work and an hour or so after- basically 8 to 7:30 is fair game) so an email at midnight implies urgency. Understand now?

If it was urgent, it wouldn’t have been sent as an email.

Op here- not accurate. I cant think of the last time anyone spoke on a phone at my company, other than once or twice with a 70 year old consultant we work on with some projects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental issue is probably that OP has company does have a thing called urgent emails. He is expected to respond to those at all hours.

They should transition to a modern technology like teams or texting and leave the asynchronous email for non-urgent matters, since it has a much higher volume

But is he actually expected to respond? It doesn't sound like he's having trouble differentiating between what's urgent and what isn't. And if he is, that's a lot easier to solve than getting people to stop sending emails when they want to.

Op here, fwiw I'm a woman and fairly senior at my co. I suspect a lot of the people answering don't appreciate that I work in a very heavy tech world (so no, it's not that I don't know how to use email or understand it can be sent whenever, and of course we use Teams and dozens of other technologies for efficiencies, both front end and back end) and that as a senior person, there is no way I would ever set a 'do not disturb' on my email other than if I was legitimately out of the country on a personal vacation (and even then, I would monitor). It would be embarrassing to set a DND; it is just not done at any level above admin. I do work across other time zones, so yes, if I get an email from someone in LA or in Europe, of course I know we are on different times, and those are not really what I'm complaining about. It is that these *local* tech people often send emails outside of work time, and too often for little stuff. But of course I don't always know it's little (and very often, I haven't thought about whatever it is there asking about in days) so I have to spend time thinking about it, or trying to find out some background. That's the primary issue. Our HR has reminded people not to do this (also because for admin staff, they might then be entitled to overtime) but some of these guys insist, and again, these are sophisticated technologists, they know how to work emails and other communication tools.

Also, as far as the people referencing asynchronous communication... of course its fine but it has to be done properly or else its considered bad form and inefficient. This is a known problem/issue at sophisticated, well run companies. As example, you don't ping someone on Teams and say 'hey Beth, do you have a minute?' (disruptive- use my calendar and/or also tell me what it is you want to talk about so we can be productive) or "Hi Joe, I have a question" (same issue). And you don't send emails during off hours (when you are on the same time zone) unless its important or unless you have specifically said 'Beth, detail detail detail info/question... and this can wait until X."

Understand now?

I find it totally bizarre that your hr has asked people not to email off hours. There is lots of good info out there about how to encourage healthy tech use and boundaries. A key tenet is allowing others to conduct their work when/how it suits them while expecting the same for yourself in return. I’m not understanding why you can’t let an e-mail sit until the next day. If you feel obligated to investigate issues off hours, your problem is not off hours *email,* your problem is that your job requires you to work off hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand the panic over receiving an email in off hours. It’s inherently asynchronous communication. You’re expected to respond when you’re available.

Op here. No, it’s not clear. We are not supposed to send emails outside normal hours (with unwritten rule about an hour or so before work and an hour or so after- basically 8 to 7:30 is fair game) so an email at midnight implies urgency. Understand now?

If it was urgent, it wouldn’t have been sent as an email.

Op here- not accurate. I cant think of the last time anyone spoke on a phone at my company, other than once or twice with a 70 year old consultant we work on with some projects.

Doesn’t change the fact that most people don’t use email for urgent items. They’ll ping you on Teams or Slack. Maybe they send an email to fully explain the situation, but they’ll ping you on Teams to let you know there’s an urgent issue that needs your attention. Sorry, but it’s not my job to manage your workday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[img]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental issue is probably that OP has company does have a thing called urgent emails. He is expected to respond to those at all hours.

They should transition to a modern technology like teams or texting and leave the asynchronous email for non-urgent matters, since it has a much higher volume

But is he actually expected to respond? It doesn't sound like he's having trouble differentiating between what's urgent and what isn't. And if he is, that's a lot easier to solve than getting people to stop sending emails when they want to.

That’s the issue. The very existence of “urgent emails” means he must take the cognitive load to evaluate every email that comes in after hours. I assume she has some filters; maybe she can see phone to only ding when her boss emails?

She needs to push back and ask for a realtime notification channel like calling or texting or maybe teams if it’s on her phone.

Op here- yes, this is it. Its the evaluation that is frustrating, especially when it is too often not worthy of an off hours email. I'm pretty never going to have DND on, as I explained above. And of course I know people in other time zones might email during *their* work hours, that's not the issue here. Its the local people. We use Teams and I have it on my phone, of course, but that doesn't really address the issue. And as far as calling for 'urgent matters', no one has used a phone to talk on at my co in over 5 years.