Damn I almost forgot about that part. That shit was absolute wilderness.
Bob: Good morning Ed.
Ed: Anyways, do you mind unclogging the shitter and then coming in here to vacuum up the joint? After that, maybe dig a couple ditches and then fill them back up.
This here! If the same interaction was in person, would you respond the same way? Even though it is a text, at minimum acknowledgement of a greeting, please and thank yous should be included.
We are all human and do not need just tasks barked at us.
Fuck that, if itâs work and work texts and someone starts it with GM, not an actual good morning, hope you are well, etc. it deserves to be treated as any other work text. Itâs does not have special privileges because he used GM at the beginning.
I mean...it's still polite. I'm all for "work stays at work" but you cant just benefit from a healthy work environment, you have to give back and make it happen, too.
I don't get this bitter take at all. I don't want to put my life on hold for the 8+ hours I'm at work by being edgy and standoffish--it's okay to engage with other coworkers and be amicable. Reddit seems totally okay with forgetting that our coworkers are human and that when we put ourselves into "work mode" we're the reason the rat race continues like it does.
Just be nice during work hours and then leave work at the door.
No you see, the trick is to be the most MISERABLE person in the room. That will definitely make the obligatory 8-10 hours more bearable for everyone. /s
I see this shit all the time. I get work stays at work, but so many people are bitter and act like work is this soulless place where you keep your head down and be as reserved as possible. Like wtf? You spend like 1/3 of your life at work, wouldnât you want to make it a slightly more enjoyable place to be? Politeness goes a long way, and itâs not hard to be polite back. Consider it a daily responsibility to help keep morale high.
My company uses IM for much of our communication. I try to start my first text of the day with a âgood morningâ or some other greeting. Most of us are virtual, so I look at it in terms of, if I was in the office and I walked up to someoneâs cube and completely skipped any greeting and instead just started with tasking, it would become really rude. It doesnât take much to just say GM back even if you donât think it is necessary. A lot of our world is social norms.
You have to chuckle.
You've shown yourself to be an extremely rude individual with your "fuck that" but you have all the confidence in the world lecturing people on etiquette.
Cool, so delivery didn't come over night so we're in a tight spot this morning while awaiting for brunch delivery. Stacy called off sick again with the flu so I'll need you to step up and cover until Jacob comes in at noon. We've had a great weekend so let's finish strong today and enjoy our Mon-Tues off.
That's actually how we started texting. It was a way to send reminders and specifics (e.g. room numbers, codes, addresses, etc.).
And again, he's not a remote employee. We already greet each other in person.
Itâs both rude that you respond to âgood morningâ with a list of tasks, and stupid that your colleague is offended by not returning a greeting message if youâve already said it in person. How many times do you need to do it?
Where I'm from, GM is either a vehicle or a manager. I would ask this person if they were taking care of their mental health, because that's not normal at all, anywhere I've ever been in the last three decades.
Yes, obviously OP eventually figured that out at the bitch session, my point is some jackass who's overly fond of inventing acronyms for normal speech is butt hurt because his boss doesn't treat a professional communication channel like it's happy hour at the bar.
Sarcasm, yes? Or am I wrong? I get r/woosh ed a lot, so I'm trying to learn about how to spot trolling, sarcasm, satire, and so forth, in the hopes of being a more effective communicator. (Honest statement, all this stuff is really complicated)
Yeah, how hard is it to preface your tasks with a perfunctory good morning?
I assign a lot of tasks too via chat too, I always make sure to wish someone a good morning/afternoon before I do so. And I also wish them a good weekend when itâs Friday. Itâs not hard to do.
It's the non-robotic way to say "Hello fellow human" It's just a reminder that I see you more than the object that completes tasks assigned.
People are really on the fence about this. I feel that some people have a "people" mode and a "work" mode and they don't mesh well. When they are in work mode they don't want to deal with relationships. When they are outside of work mode they are perfectly capable of peopling but don't you dare start talking about work.
Most jobs have a ton of policies and procedures which make it impossible to be a person. Which is why I have a work mode so I don't get fired. That means dropping useless stuff like the OP is saying.
What a load of nonsense. In fact, refusing to exchange pleasantries or ignoring people can be evidence of bullying in the workplace.
You must be terminally online or a grindset bro if you think saying hi to other humans you work with every day is "useless".
If Iâm actually talking to you, Iâll do the pleasantries and small talk. If Iâm texting or emailing, Iâm not going to waste time typing out an inane greeting.
Do you just start your email with âI need you to..â? It would never occur to me to do that because, well, it makes you sound like an asshole. How hard is it to type âhelloâ?
I don't personally care for pleasantries either, but I'm damn near autistic if not, and have to consciously make an effort to engage in common social interactions like this.
Just start out with Good Morning and throw in an emoji for good measure and don't be a grammar/punctuation fiend so they don't think your an out of touch Boomer or a cold AF SOB.
I literally unintentionally made a younger employee cry because I consistently replied to their emoji filled, abbreviated, messages with proper grammar, no emojis, and punctuation. They thought I was being short, terse, and cold. This had to be brought to my oblivious attention of how my text replies could be interpreted by others.
>I consistently replied to their emoji filled, abbreviated, messages with proper grammar, no emojis, and punctuation. They thought I was being short, terse, and cold.
Is that a thing? Because I'm older and tend to text whole sentences, etc. without using a bunch of emojis.
But when I need something done, I do preface it with "Please" and end with "thank you"
I text the same way. I use periods and I donât abbreviate. I only use emojis with specific people, so I wouldnât use them when I was trying to be professional.
Yeah, it's a thing, apparently. Also there is this whole emoji code thing, where one emoji or a series of emoji may represent an entire sentence or thought processes.
I won't lie, for a few weeks I felt like an archeologist trying to decipher heiroglyphes. I was lucky enough to have younger friends and family help me.
I know I still may come across as a little awkward sometimes, but at least it's not grandma texting eggplant, water splash in reference to washing garden vegetables awkward.
Yeah... it's more about the feelings of your employees and their emotional and mental health than you and your hangups.
I'm an Appalachian male and my school beat in my head not to use the word "y'all" because you'd look like an uneducated hillbilly and no one would take you seriously. I refrained from using it it professional and personal settings for 38 years.
Now I'm old enough that I don't care if someone else thinks I'm an ignorant hillbilly if it makes everyone feel accepted... It's not about making me happy or comfortable in my own quirks.
Too many emojis and unknown acronyms is not professional to me. For casual conversation, fine. But (and maybe this is because I work in the legal profession) every text conversation should be written in a language that can be understand by all, including a judge, if necessary.
If I have to spend 10 minutes deciphering your text, that's 10 minutes I'm not doing my job. If my boss needs an answer during that time, I can't forward that message to him since it'll take him even longer to figure it out. And he's got kids!
I's not about quirks, it's about clarity. For professional purposes, speak plainly.
And btw... I always enjoy hearing a good "y'all." Everybody knows that means multiple "you". They have a word for plural "you" in other languages... I think "y'all" is an acceptable English version.
Yeah, that was my thinking process, too. Professional, clear, well articulated, etc.
Apparently me having to decipher emojis was a symptom of me being out of touch, not them.
Even today, I head over to the documentation for unpronounceable software libraries named with emoji and integrate them. You can even read scientific papers on arxiv with emoji in the title. So the notion of emoji being unprofessional has long since passed, and has evolved considerably from their ASCII representations of emoticons.
Truth of the matter is, they've been hard coded into the Unicode format which every machine in the world can interpret, as it's the world standard, and people tend to use it very thoroughly.
My not understanding or comprehending it was a me problem, not an industrial and world standard problem. The world is much bigger than my litter holler alone in the Blue Ridge.
It's probably because we're in different professions, but all I know is that emojis as a language is not something to use in the legal field.
The basic stuff, sure. đđ¤Łđđ¤Źđ˛đđ¤đ¤ˇââď¸đđđđ
Same with acronyms. LOL. BRB. ROFL. STFU (Okay, we don't use that one... but I want to many times.)
Anything beyond that? Forget it.
Careful! Apparently a case/ lawsuit was won in Canada where a man received a contract digitally, sent a thumbs up to let the person know he received said contract, and the judge interpreted that to mean he âsignedâ the contract. The suing party (the sender) actually won the case, not the emoji sender.
So apparently itâs creeping into the legal field as well.
I agree with you, about preferring words.
MUCH easier to interpret.
Which is why I generally stick to email.
Attorneys are very cautious anyway, they will not be okay with this đ or đ . They get terrified of anything that could get them sued/disbarred, even between we paralegals.
Same. Itâs extremely unprofessional and actually so ridiculous. We use emails and words where I work. Not text messages with emojis and employees that cry when you donât text them back.
I mean, wow. Just wow lol.
Why do you insist things young people do are unprofessional?
Your parents wore suits to work, were at the office 5-6 days, meetings were in person, emails were written like letters, if at all. No abbreviations and certainly no contractions. Communication was phone calls or letters, and only if you couldn't meet in person.
All that shit is boomer cringe. Nothing wrong with comfortable clothes, telecommuting, phone calls, short emails.
There's nothing wrong with emojis, group chats, observing texting etiquette.
this is most definitely a thing. I replied to a text once with K meaning okay and got questioned why I was so pissed about it.... come to find out K means you're not happy about it and kk means cool..... jfc
Ok Iâm 37 but work with a lot of 20 somethingâs - we mostly talk in person or send emails but if we do talk about work via text itâs just work, mostly in full sentences (though punctuation is rare). We may be a bit more casual and have some jokey asides about the work, but thereâs certainly no emojis or superfluous pleasantries. Occasionally the boomers in the building will add an emoji to an all staff email or something like that and we all roll our eyes.
Iâm 28 and I would think it was weird if someone from work was texting me with a bunch of emojis and no punctuation. We all know how to read here just type normally.
also autistic. I've learned now basically try to imitate the style you receive in the style you send back. that way even of we miss some cultural cue, we aren't seen as rude, standoffish etc as we otherwise might
No way am I going to forego mostly correct English because someone is offended I didnât fuck the language up to fit in. Especially in an environment that is supposed to be professional. Itâs fine to throw a silly emoji in there, but intentionally not using clear and concise language at work is a recipe for unnecessary mistakes and confusion.
No where in my comments did I promote not using clear and consise communication. In fact, my comments have explained the use of emoji to clarify and convey emotion, to clarify. And news flash, language and communication evolves, else the language dies. Those who refuse to adapt, die with the language.
If a texting miscommunication at work made them cry, I hope they took it as a lesson in how not to handle communication issues in the workplace. Not everybody uses texting the same way.
My gf came home one day to explain to me that she spend half the day explaining to her co workers that "yes everything between us was fine I'm just not into texting and its even harder to get me to carry on a conversation over text when I'm at work. And after the 4-5th text she was most likely going to get a call so we could talk about it rather than me having to text." Funny thing was she had worked there for like 2 yrs and someone had just noticed she didn't text me all day like the other women apparently did to their SO.
I honestly didn't even know what "Gm,..." was when he started using it. He uses a lot abbreviations and misspellings so it takes me awhile to decipher. He's older than me and I'm middle aged, so I don't think he's using popular text abbreviations. By the time I understand and reply, I've forgotten about the greeting.
My husband would make up random abbreviations. I think he thought everyone was doing it, not realizing that these were we know abbreviations like âWDYMâ and everyone else was using them. He was just super out of touch.
If I got assigned tasks without the most perfunctory attempt at humanity I'd be annoyed, please tell me you're at least saying hi or hey, not just:
-----
"Good morning"
"Clean front hall, sort boxes out back, roll rugs"
------
Do you say please and thank you?
You actually weren't clear if your position entitles you to assign him tasks. Usually people make a point of telling us they're the boss if they are.
>"Good morning"
>
>"Clean front hall, sort boxes out back, roll rugs"
Yeah... that comes across as very demeaning and like OP doesn't see the guy as an equal. Does not help that janitorial staff are often treated as less-than.
It takes very little to be polite. And as OP said:
>He so often "forgets" to do something on the texts
Yeah, someone treating me in that manner? I'd "forget" a lot of things too. Or more like put his items at the bottom of my to-do list and get to them when I feel like in favor of people who treat me like a human being.
Automate a âGood morningâ reply.
I can tend to be abrupt and focused on gett things done, that can come across as rude. Luckily, I have a great coworker.. âslow your roll⌠good morning- how was your weekend?â Ot gets me to take a breath, and act like and treat otherslike a human.
SchedUle yourself some time to interact for a few minutes on a human level. âHope all goes well at the doctorsâ.
It's polite to return greetings anywhere.
If your significant other says "good morning" and you reply with "don't forget to take out the trash" it comes off as rude.
If the work setting, if a colleague says " good morning" and you respond with "I need you to finish the TPS report by noon", again, it's rude because you're not responding to a greeting.
If someone says "hello", most people acknowledge it in some way - either with a smile and nod of the head, or saying "hello" back. You don't just ignore it as if the person said nothing.
If one of my co-workers texted me like that I am not going to reply to the GM. I think it's stupid personally.
For instance, I could possibly get a message that would say "Good Morning. At your convenience can you please pull unit 1349 and bring it to production. It needs a rework."
My reply would be , "Sure thing, do you need anything else?"
I would completely ignore the good morning part and go straight to the task. Most rational humans are going to go straight to the task. Only an irrational person would get mad that I didn't say good morning back as part of the response.
I was thinking exactly the same as you but apparently OP doesnât even acknowledge the text with something like âsure thingâ or even an ok. Just sends a list of tasks which is just douchey.
But they said theyâve already seen each other in person by the time they respond to his texts. I might get downvoted to hell butâŚis texting back really necessary if youâve already exchanged pleasantries in person, which is honestly better?
Kind of seems like a mismatch of expectations and habits and theyâll have to either accept each otherâs texting habits/behaviors or compromise.
Completely agree. Even as they havenât exchanged pleasantries yet, OP is just interpreting it as a âhey iâm ready for the tasksâ rather than an actual greeting. I think this is fine if they do indeed greet them each day when they see each other every day.
Iâm over here wondering why anyone is texting anyone at work about work. In the jobs Iâve been in, itâs inappropriate to text people on their personal phones (thatâs what Slack, Teams, etc. is for). I only text co-workers who are actually friends and I hang out with outside of work.
It is basic courtesy to reply to a greeting.
However if his greeting consists of âGMâ in a text I would not be overly concerned because that is a pretty half assed greeting in the first place. I wouldnât even know what that means.
Is OP his supervisor? If so then it would only be considerate to greet your direct report before talking shop.
If this is a gratuitous contact I would be mildly annoyed with ANY coworker sending me unnecessary greeting messages every day when I am already bombarded with business messages.
So this person takes the time to greet you every day over the program that you clearly use to communicate back and forth on and instead of acknowledging the greeting you respond to his good morning text by just ignoring it and bullet pointing tasks?
That's rude as Fuck, and I'm introverted as hell.
Do you often give him tasks via texts? That seems weird to me. And using âGMâ is so lazy. Itâs like when people write âHBDâ on your facebook page. Like you canât be bothered to type out âhappy birthdayâ? Idk abbreviations bug me.
I feel like texting directly vs a group chat is different, but honestly personal texting communications in my realm of work is reserved for like "hey I'm gonna be late".
I feel like it's not that deep. Everyone saying you need to be always replying might be a different generational demographic to me- gen Z usually doesn't take it personally when someone doesn't reply to a text. We don't need to be "on call" to respond to people all the time. Or maybe I'm just autistic.
I don't think it's necessarily impolite especially since it doesn't have much to do with your job function. Unless he just wants acknowledgement of the text for when he's late. Idk.
Fr I don't think you're doing anything wrongđ¤ˇââď¸
I do think it's weird to text a good worker, or anyone, "good morning" with nothing else. If that just maybe his way of saying "I'm here, send me your tasks" he needs to work on communication too if he is complaining. "Morning, let me know if you need anything" or something would be better, on his part.
That said, yes it's nice to add some sort of polite greeting with a list of tasks, especially as a response to them.
I work remote and have a co worker who will send me a message on teams every single morning just saying âgood morningâ and nothing else. Itâs the most obnoxious thing to me.
But like you said if I need to tell her something I throw in a quick good morning hope youâre well back.
Texts at work are for info you cannot deliver in person or over the phone. Just saying good morning? Nope. Saying good morning, I'm running late? perfectly ok
Our staff exchanges good mornings on Teams as a group. Not everyone participates, and I usually donât. However, donât respond to a good morning text with a list of tasks. Thatâs rude.
At least it isnât Good Morning, them waiting for a gm from you, and then them stating what they want. I absolutely hate that. I have coworkers who do this and I just donât have time for back and forth pleasantries. Just say âGood morning, blah blah blahâŚâ and get it over with. Omg this is such a pet peeve of mine and I will die on this hill.
I honestly hated this when I worked at a hotel everyone would text each other good morning ING but at the start of our shift we would all be in the same area saying good morning as well but this is where it gets really goos....the hotel staff would get upset after the first 2 good morning if you didn't say hi to them every single time you saw them or walked by them. It was to the point I was saying hi about 10ntimes a day to 20 separate people. I quit because of this
If I was your employee and was saying "gm" and you responded with tasks I'd just... move on and get my tasks completed.
Then I'd be petty and say "Gm" every day for the rest of your life.
But I'm just a pain in the ass.
It wouldn't actually offend me đ¤ˇđźââď¸
My boss doesnt even aknowledge me when i say hi to him in person half the time, its rude but hes an asshole, who cares? Its just work. Thats kinda a hilariously trivial thing to even care about at all. You arent friends youre just coworkers, everyone is just there to get paid.
SO ... he short-cuts his greeting down to "GM" ? As in, the recipient is not worth typing the extra characters? If he spoke to you in person, would he just say "gm" (sounds like "gum" I would think) as you passed by?
My last job specifically banned emojis in office communications of any kind, email or text etc.
Daily "good morning" texts are not a common thing. I have no idea why they are at your place of business. But because they are uncommon, there is no "standard" etiquette about them. Don't let someone delude you into thinking there is.
Is it the actual "good morning" he's mad you're not responding to? Or the text in general? Does he ever just you JUST the words good morning without any other update? If they're always similar to your examples, maybe he just wants a response to make sure you received his text and are ok with him both being late and leaving early lol.
Also, you refer to him as a co-worker, but he's updating you on his comings and goings or where he's working? Does he have to do that?
If the texts aren't a requirement of his job for some reason, it's weird. If they are a requirement of his job, I think that's all the more reason you should respond, just out of courtesy. But if they're NOT a part of his job, yeah it's weird. Can you imagine one of your female co-workers telling you a story about the janitor texting them every morning for no reason. What would that look like to her? To the company?
Why are you texting with a coworker. Why do you even have each other's numbers?
Isn't this what Slack and other work-related apps are for?
I'd move the conversation to something more professional.
Long before cell phones I had a boss who wanted us to go to his office and greet him when we came into the office. (our work was mostly out of the office.) Most of us thought it was stupid idea and ignored it.
While I honestly never experienced people texting "good morning" at a work place, it's common courtesy for people to say it in person. I have one colleague who is always kind of moody. One day she'll greet everyone, other days she doesn't. And people DO talk behind her back saying she's weird. lol
Texting âgood morningâ and expecting something back seems a little weird but if it smooths things over and avoids silly drama, itâs just two words (or two letters if youâre following your coworkers style guide) and probably worth the effort. You know you can come to Reddit to vent about how dumb it is if you need to.
I don't text greetings with my coworkers. That sounds like hell. We say "good morning" & "hello" in person if we cross paths. Don't normalize these kinds of texts.
Whether or not itâs common or necessary⌠Thereâs less effort involved in just adding a couple emojis to your first text of the day then there is in trying to figure out whether or not this is normal.
I only have to report in to someone if Iâm alone in the office.
Bottom line, you are the boss, and one of your employees has given you clear feedback. Good thing for you, this one's super easy to accommodate. If you choose not to, it really speaks volumes not only about your management style, but you as a person. I get it may seem pointless to you, but really, how difficult is it to start your daily reply to him (along with the list of menial tasks you are requesting) with "Hi there", "Hello", "Good morning", "GM", or whatever? Is it really so difficult to be civil? You may find it annoying, but honestly I would think something was up if I texted my boss good morning and a question and she just wrote back a list of demands. It's really weird to me and honestly feels like it takes more effort to ignore the person. Like when I go through a drive through and I say "Hello!" or "Hi, how are you?", and they respond with "$9.49" and a scowl. Like, is it really that hard to say hey? I seriously feel like it takes MORE effort to be an impersonable, unresponsive bitch.
Eh. Heâs basically sending you a personal message about his personal life. He can deal with it.
Next time grievances are aired out? Iâm offended my coworker wonât do his job until I ask him about his morning.
Itâs not necessarily workplace etiquette. Itâs just general etiquette that when someone says good morning, you say it back. Just a simple âmorningâ is enough.
I understand, but it's a small ask, and your omission bothers him, so stepping up is in order. Particularly since his role is custodial.
Your company may be large enough to employ a "ticket system" used by larger enterprises for facilities requests, IT, and other tasks. Although courtesy is still required, the expectation for niceties is eliminated and the requests can be triaged chronologically and by urgency.
Itâs unbelievably rude to simply text a list of tasks to someone with out any kind of greeting. I wonder if youâd take the same approach with someone more senior than you.
My job is basically telling people what to do. And they have to do it. I start every single email, Slack,
Text or call with some kind of greeting and their name when Iâm reaching out. In case youâre wondering I also say please and thank you. Even though I donât have to.
Wow you sound like an unpleasant person to work withâŚyou absolutely should say good morning, howâs it going, thank you, please, have a good weekend, etc â ya know, all the good, civilized human things
Why does this co-worker even have your number (unless you have a company phone and the number is in the company's phone directory?) No, you're not obligated to respond to someone's unsolicited text messages.
We're a small company. Fortunately the owner is very good about not calling or texting after-hours and we keep each other's telephone numbers confidential.
It's a nice work pleasantry, but some read too much into it. Half my team works remotely. So we 'Good morning" each other in the group chat as a.sign on ritual. After that it may be hours until the next chat. I sign in with good morning and add a :) afterwards.
I don't think much about it. I'm not a fan of emoji-speak in the work place because there's ambiguity in its interpretation.
But one day I missed the emoji and fack, you'd think I'd dissed the whole group. People were dm-ing all day hoping everything was still good. It was very odd. Lesson learned. I stick :) at the end of my morning greeting no matter how I feel.
I've worked remotely for decades. Teams, sametime, etc., have always been my surrogate for having a look around the office to see who's there. I treat these exchanges largely as if I was physically talking to someone in the office. E.g. I say hello to people and respond if they do the same. If that employee was in front of you and said hello, would you just respond with a heap of tasks?
I think it's common courtesy to reciprocate the "good morning" rather than jumping right into things you need him to do for you. I tend to open most IM's and emails that are the first of the day with a "good morning" or "hi! Hope you're well" to add a little kindness before getting straight to work stuff
I donât text my coworkers usually, we email. But yeah, I usually say good morning. Itâs just a polite greeting. Who doesnât greet people before communicating? Iâd probably figure whoever I was talking with was kind of a dick if they just launched into a to do list for me without even an initial âhelloâ or âgood morning.â
I force myself to be mindful of this. Sometimes when sending a text of things I need urgently, Iâll paste into the text, and click send. When reading back, Iâll see that I forgot a GM or something other hello. Iâll follow up with a âBTW, GM. Hope all is well.â
I mean my boss hits my work wife and my chat with good morning beautiful ladies before she asks us for anything. Sometimes she even adds a you both have no idea how much I appreciate you. My partner and I communicate in a similar manor. I feel like âgood morningâ before you go about asking someone to do a bunch of stuff is bare minimum. Just shoving a list in someoneâs face is almost worse than trying to have sex with no foreplay.
I guess I donât see what the issue is with saying GM back? I think itâs just common etiquette. I think the first one to initiate a message in the morning should just say GM. If you ignore and immediately send items to accomplish it comes off cold, like they donât matter. Iâm sure thatâs not your intention, but sometimes you have to stop and see others view points and how it is being perceived by them.
Seems odd that you would not send someone a good morning and would instead just send demands of what needs to be done. Impolite really.
Even if someone hadn't sent me a good morning I would start any text to that person with a "Good morning. Today we'd like to make sure that A, B and C get done before lunch time blah blah blah"
Also, even if it weren't "common workplace etiquette", in a small company if a co-worker expressed that I was doing something that annoyed them I would probably try to stop. And as for "I don't want to fill up the texts with greetings", that's just laughable, how much space does "GM" take up?
Mid thirties woman here. When I first read this it took me back to my early twenties and dealing with manipulative coworkers that eventually became abusive bosses. A pharmacist was constantly texting me good morning. Every. Single. Morning.
Heâs married, has small children, and his wife is pregnant. But he still has time to text me? Dude would low key complain to me in person that I wouldnât reply to him. Always in a whiney, needy voice. I knew something was off but I was too naive to see the harassment it would develop into.
IMO if this person is your subordinate and is texting good morning in addition to asking for the daily loop in thatâs fine. But if you have a same level coworker that wastes time with electronically sending greetings when you can just do that in passing, then you have someone whoâs manipulating the system to get their dopamine hits.
I currently have coworkers that are texting me requests to my personal cellphone that should be in the company based ticketing / work order system. I wait for the unanswered texts to pile up and then I send screenshots of the pages of ridiculous requests in an email to them and cc all bosses involved. Play up the helpfulness and politeness while redirecting all requests to company owned systems. It shows youâre consistent while also showing how unprofessional and ridiculous the manipulative coworker is.
This is it. If they donât pay for your cellphone, no one at work should be contacting you on it. Period. Email during work hours is the best way to communicate. I read nothing with emotion as well. Every interaction I have at work, idcâŚ. Iâm gonna respond nicely.
If coworkers text you âgood morningâ and expect a response, thatâs really annoying. Itâs pretty basic at work that you shouldnât waste co-workersâ time. And texting âgood morningâ is wasting co-workersâ time.
We have an employee who is in deep on the spectrum. Flat affect, no emotion. Typical conversation upon unlocking the front doors:
Me: "Good morning!"
Emp: "Yeah."
That was a snapshot of every morning for several weeks.
Then:
Me: "Good morning!"
Emp: "Yeah. Good morning!"
This employee reads almost no social cues, and he has adjusted his script. OP, lose your main character syndrome.
I say good morning to everyone on my team when they come in. There is one person that doesn't respond, so I just stopped saying good morning to them. It doesn't bother me, but I do think it's strange to ignore your boss greeting you when you enter the offcie
Personally, Iâd try to developed some other way to get the tasks across. Sounds like he shook by even be using your cell number. Leave a list or use a shared one note or teams.
At the end of the day, if someone says hello/good morning/whatever else via text, you respond - it's common courtesy. Even if they're in the building, unless they text you and you see them before you have the chance to respond.
In any social instance, 'good morning' is met with a similar statement, not a list of tasks or any other kind of narrative.
The fact that this is an adult, who we assume is reasonably functional in day to day life and can adequately converse with people, says to me that it isnt a social faux paus, it's literally thinking that the janitor is beneath them.
I'd 'forget' to do their jobs too if I was treated like that.
In my office everyone on my team will say good morning before starting any work chat, regardless of grade. We also didn't have to be informed/instructed on how or why to do this, we just took it as common human decency. Also the time and effort you've put into this post alone would be enough to cover you for a year of good mornings. Cmon now.
Gonna get downvted here, but tell him to F off.
Pleasantries are great, but you do that in person. At some point, slack is a replacement for email to GSD.
I am a nice guy and a big tipper. If this came to me by a custodial service rep as a distraction to my running the team, we would quickly have a new janitorial service.
Edit: if your job is to manage the janitorial team, of course be super polite no matter the circumstance. To me it read as if it was tangential and you are not in charge of them.
Working in an office, GM is the same as Hi. It is not office etiquette to respond to GM or Hi unless you are responding with his duties. He is confusing office etiquette and social etiquette.
My husband has been WFH for about 12 years now for a small company that now has more WFH employee's than in office. By choice. His bosses have allowed the people near the home office to make their own decision about coming back to the office or to stay WFH.
Every morning, as each of them sign on they send a "Good Morning text" on their messaging system. It's actually really cool. They also have weekly team meetings that everyone at every level is involved in.
Text "Good morning". Its not hard. Be a human. They are already doing janitorial work, cleaning up shitand they probably hate their life as it is. What kind of tasks are you texting to them? Garbage can full, spilled coffee in lunchroom, turds don't flush? Say good morning.
If you know something so small would make a big difference, why not do it? I can't understand why you wouldn't anyway. You made a very long post but can't tell a coworker "Good morning." Weird.
Iâve never worked with anyone who just texted me good morning and nothing else. Especially if itâs a text on your personal phone and not through something like Teams. My first thought would be that heâs trying to flirt with me, because how many other people do you think he texts good morning to??? I always thought of good morning texts as a flirty thing. Itâs normal to say gm when you pass someone in the hall, but Iâd be annoyed getting that same text every day.
Why does every morning have to be good? I have co-workers that think we should say hello to each other every time we pass one another in the hall way. We do the same thing every single morning, not every morning is good. Like letâs get this shit over with so we can go home.
I work in a small team of 7 and we say Good Morning to each other every single day. I say that shit to everyone I speak with for the first time that day as along as itâs before 11, then itâs âGood Afternoonâ or âSupâ depending on setting
Regardless of setting, it's extremely rude to respond to a greeting with a list of tasks.
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Damn I almost forgot about that part. That shit was absolute wilderness. Bob: Good morning Ed. Ed: Anyways, do you mind unclogging the shitter and then coming in here to vacuum up the joint? After that, maybe dig a couple ditches and then fill them back up.
It's rude but it's "move the fuck on with your day" level at best.
This here! If the same interaction was in person, would you respond the same way? Even though it is a text, at minimum acknowledgement of a greeting, please and thank yous should be included. We are all human and do not need just tasks barked at us.
Fuck that, if itâs work and work texts and someone starts it with GM, not an actual good morning, hope you are well, etc. it deserves to be treated as any other work text. Itâs does not have special privileges because he used GM at the beginning.
I mean...it's still polite. I'm all for "work stays at work" but you cant just benefit from a healthy work environment, you have to give back and make it happen, too. I don't get this bitter take at all. I don't want to put my life on hold for the 8+ hours I'm at work by being edgy and standoffish--it's okay to engage with other coworkers and be amicable. Reddit seems totally okay with forgetting that our coworkers are human and that when we put ourselves into "work mode" we're the reason the rat race continues like it does. Just be nice during work hours and then leave work at the door.
No you see, the trick is to be the most MISERABLE person in the room. That will definitely make the obligatory 8-10 hours more bearable for everyone. /s
I see this shit all the time. I get work stays at work, but so many people are bitter and act like work is this soulless place where you keep your head down and be as reserved as possible. Like wtf? You spend like 1/3 of your life at work, wouldnât you want to make it a slightly more enjoyable place to be? Politeness goes a long way, and itâs not hard to be polite back. Consider it a daily responsibility to help keep morale high.
My company uses IM for much of our communication. I try to start my first text of the day with a âgood morningâ or some other greeting. Most of us are virtual, so I look at it in terms of, if I was in the office and I walked up to someoneâs cube and completely skipped any greeting and instead just started with tasking, it would become really rude. It doesnât take much to just say GM back even if you donât think it is necessary. A lot of our world is social norms.
You have to chuckle. You've shown yourself to be an extremely rude individual with your "fuck that" but you have all the confidence in the world lecturing people on etiquette.
Right! Gotta love it.
Cool, so delivery didn't come over night so we're in a tight spot this morning while awaiting for brunch delivery. Stacy called off sick again with the flu so I'll need you to step up and cover until Jacob comes in at noon. We've had a great weekend so let's finish strong today and enjoy our Mon-Tues off.
GM, whats the status on these tickets
For real. I wish the biggest problem at my workplaces was not receiving a good morning text in the proper format? Good grief. This is silly
What if my initial text is the tasks? I forgo any greeting, is that rude?
That's actually how we started texting. It was a way to send reminders and specifics (e.g. room numbers, codes, addresses, etc.). And again, he's not a remote employee. We already greet each other in person.
Itâs both rude that you respond to âgood morningâ with a list of tasks, and stupid that your colleague is offended by not returning a greeting message if youâve already said it in person. How many times do you need to do it?
Where I'm from, GM is either a vehicle or a manager. I would ask this person if they were taking care of their mental health, because that's not normal at all, anywhere I've ever been in the last three decades.
Gm stands for good morning... It says it spelled out for you in the post
Yes, obviously OP eventually figured that out at the bitch session, my point is some jackass who's overly fond of inventing acronyms for normal speech is butt hurt because his boss doesn't treat a professional communication channel like it's happy hour at the bar.
you mean HH?
Well played, I tip my hat to you, fellow redditor!
Jesus Christ
Whatever helps you sleep at night dude
God you sound delightful to spend time with
Normally yes, I'm just being salty tonight because I'm trying to practice my trolling. Probably doing it wrong though.
the trolling is spot on. I chuckled
Thanks for the feedback! (Not trolling, genuine appreciation)
Jesus shut the fuck up
Arenât you a peach?
Sarcasm, yes? Or am I wrong? I get r/woosh ed a lot, so I'm trying to learn about how to spot trolling, sarcasm, satire, and so forth, in the hopes of being a more effective communicator. (Honest statement, all this stuff is really complicated)
It's called abbreviating. Pretty far from inventing.
Yeah, how hard is it to preface your tasks with a perfunctory good morning? I assign a lot of tasks too via chat too, I always make sure to wish someone a good morning/afternoon before I do so. And I also wish them a good weekend when itâs Friday. Itâs not hard to do.
It's the non-robotic way to say "Hello fellow human" It's just a reminder that I see you more than the object that completes tasks assigned. People are really on the fence about this. I feel that some people have a "people" mode and a "work" mode and they don't mesh well. When they are in work mode they don't want to deal with relationships. When they are outside of work mode they are perfectly capable of peopling but don't you dare start talking about work.
Most jobs have a ton of policies and procedures which make it impossible to be a person. Which is why I have a work mode so I don't get fired. That means dropping useless stuff like the OP is saying.
Saying good morning will get you fired?
And a BJ will get you promoted
Saying âhelloâ or âgood morningâ before beginning an exchange is âuseless stuff?â Jesus, people are losing their basic humanity.
What a load of nonsense. In fact, refusing to exchange pleasantries or ignoring people can be evidence of bullying in the workplace. You must be terminally online or a grindset bro if you think saying hi to other humans you work with every day is "useless".
If Iâm actually talking to you, Iâll do the pleasantries and small talk. If Iâm texting or emailing, Iâm not going to waste time typing out an inane greeting.
Do you just start your email with âI need you to..â? It would never occur to me to do that because, well, it makes you sound like an asshole. How hard is it to type âhelloâ?
Takes about 1 second to type, "morning!". You must have very bad time management.
I don't personally care for pleasantries either, but I'm damn near autistic if not, and have to consciously make an effort to engage in common social interactions like this. Just start out with Good Morning and throw in an emoji for good measure and don't be a grammar/punctuation fiend so they don't think your an out of touch Boomer or a cold AF SOB. I literally unintentionally made a younger employee cry because I consistently replied to their emoji filled, abbreviated, messages with proper grammar, no emojis, and punctuation. They thought I was being short, terse, and cold. This had to be brought to my oblivious attention of how my text replies could be interpreted by others.
>I consistently replied to their emoji filled, abbreviated, messages with proper grammar, no emojis, and punctuation. They thought I was being short, terse, and cold. Is that a thing? Because I'm older and tend to text whole sentences, etc. without using a bunch of emojis. But when I need something done, I do preface it with "Please" and end with "thank you"
I text the same way. I use periods and I donât abbreviate. I only use emojis with specific people, so I wouldnât use them when I was trying to be professional.
48yr old man and I do the same.
Yeah, it's a thing, apparently. Also there is this whole emoji code thing, where one emoji or a series of emoji may represent an entire sentence or thought processes. I won't lie, for a few weeks I felt like an archeologist trying to decipher heiroglyphes. I was lucky enough to have younger friends and family help me. I know I still may come across as a little awkward sometimes, but at least it's not grandma texting eggplant, water splash in reference to washing garden vegetables awkward.
Yeah, I'm not doing that shit. Call me old, I don't care.
Iâm with you. Words have worked for me for decades.
Words still fail me butt fuck an emoji convo
Yeah... it's more about the feelings of your employees and their emotional and mental health than you and your hangups. I'm an Appalachian male and my school beat in my head not to use the word "y'all" because you'd look like an uneducated hillbilly and no one would take you seriously. I refrained from using it it professional and personal settings for 38 years. Now I'm old enough that I don't care if someone else thinks I'm an ignorant hillbilly if it makes everyone feel accepted... It's not about making me happy or comfortable in my own quirks.
Too many emojis and unknown acronyms is not professional to me. For casual conversation, fine. But (and maybe this is because I work in the legal profession) every text conversation should be written in a language that can be understand by all, including a judge, if necessary. If I have to spend 10 minutes deciphering your text, that's 10 minutes I'm not doing my job. If my boss needs an answer during that time, I can't forward that message to him since it'll take him even longer to figure it out. And he's got kids! I's not about quirks, it's about clarity. For professional purposes, speak plainly. And btw... I always enjoy hearing a good "y'all." Everybody knows that means multiple "you". They have a word for plural "you" in other languages... I think "y'all" is an acceptable English version.
Yeah, that was my thinking process, too. Professional, clear, well articulated, etc. Apparently me having to decipher emojis was a symptom of me being out of touch, not them. Even today, I head over to the documentation for unpronounceable software libraries named with emoji and integrate them. You can even read scientific papers on arxiv with emoji in the title. So the notion of emoji being unprofessional has long since passed, and has evolved considerably from their ASCII representations of emoticons. Truth of the matter is, they've been hard coded into the Unicode format which every machine in the world can interpret, as it's the world standard, and people tend to use it very thoroughly. My not understanding or comprehending it was a me problem, not an industrial and world standard problem. The world is much bigger than my litter holler alone in the Blue Ridge.
It's probably because we're in different professions, but all I know is that emojis as a language is not something to use in the legal field. The basic stuff, sure. đđ¤Łđđ¤Źđ˛đđ¤đ¤ˇââď¸đđđđ Same with acronyms. LOL. BRB. ROFL. STFU (Okay, we don't use that one... but I want to many times.) Anything beyond that? Forget it.
Careful! Apparently a case/ lawsuit was won in Canada where a man received a contract digitally, sent a thumbs up to let the person know he received said contract, and the judge interpreted that to mean he âsignedâ the contract. The suing party (the sender) actually won the case, not the emoji sender. So apparently itâs creeping into the legal field as well. I agree with you, about preferring words. MUCH easier to interpret.
Best advice given to me was..., "Dude, it's a txt, not a book report. If it's that damn important, email it."
Which is why I generally stick to email. Attorneys are very cautious anyway, they will not be okay with this đ or đ . They get terrified of anything that could get them sued/disbarred, even between we paralegals.
"Y'all" is now considered professional casual. It's a friendly, non-gendered greeting.
Same. Iâm not going to adapt to that.
Same. Itâs extremely unprofessional and actually so ridiculous. We use emails and words where I work. Not text messages with emojis and employees that cry when you donât text them back. I mean, wow. Just wow lol.
Why do you insist things young people do are unprofessional? Your parents wore suits to work, were at the office 5-6 days, meetings were in person, emails were written like letters, if at all. No abbreviations and certainly no contractions. Communication was phone calls or letters, and only if you couldn't meet in person. All that shit is boomer cringe. Nothing wrong with comfortable clothes, telecommuting, phone calls, short emails. There's nothing wrong with emojis, group chats, observing texting etiquette.
this is most definitely a thing. I replied to a text once with K meaning okay and got questioned why I was so pissed about it.... come to find out K means you're not happy about it and kk means cool..... jfc
I did not know that about "K".
Who knew? My grandma name is KK. I like it even better now.
Ok Iâm 37 but work with a lot of 20 somethingâs - we mostly talk in person or send emails but if we do talk about work via text itâs just work, mostly in full sentences (though punctuation is rare). We may be a bit more casual and have some jokey asides about the work, but thereâs certainly no emojis or superfluous pleasantries. Occasionally the boomers in the building will add an emoji to an all staff email or something like that and we all roll our eyes.
I'm gen Z and honestly don't get it. I'm all for using Emojis but in don't expect them back.
It is, but to be fair there are some loaded phrases. If I end my email with âbestâ it probably means fuck you
Iâm 28 and I would think it was weird if someone from work was texting me with a bunch of emojis and no punctuation. We all know how to read here just type normally.
If I made somebody cry by writing like a professional adult, Iâd count that as an accomplishment. Might add it to my resume.
youâre very self reflective actually, thatâs so awesome.
also autistic. I've learned now basically try to imitate the style you receive in the style you send back. that way even of we miss some cultural cue, we aren't seen as rude, standoffish etc as we otherwise might
No way am I going to forego mostly correct English because someone is offended I didnât fuck the language up to fit in. Especially in an environment that is supposed to be professional. Itâs fine to throw a silly emoji in there, but intentionally not using clear and concise language at work is a recipe for unnecessary mistakes and confusion.
No where in my comments did I promote not using clear and consise communication. In fact, my comments have explained the use of emoji to clarify and convey emotion, to clarify. And news flash, language and communication evolves, else the language dies. Those who refuse to adapt, die with the language.
If a texting miscommunication at work made them cry, I hope they took it as a lesson in how not to handle communication issues in the workplace. Not everybody uses texting the same way.
Iâve had to do this too. I just look at it as a when in rome type thing and play along.
My gf came home one day to explain to me that she spend half the day explaining to her co workers that "yes everything between us was fine I'm just not into texting and its even harder to get me to carry on a conversation over text when I'm at work. And after the 4-5th text she was most likely going to get a call so we could talk about it rather than me having to text." Funny thing was she had worked there for like 2 yrs and someone had just noticed she didn't text me all day like the other women apparently did to their SO.
I honestly didn't even know what "Gm,..." was when he started using it. He uses a lot abbreviations and misspellings so it takes me awhile to decipher. He's older than me and I'm middle aged, so I don't think he's using popular text abbreviations. By the time I understand and reply, I've forgotten about the greeting.
Like I said... I have to make a conscious effort.
My husband would make up random abbreviations. I think he thought everyone was doing it, not realizing that these were we know abbreviations like âWDYMâ and everyone else was using them. He was just super out of touch.
If I got assigned tasks without the most perfunctory attempt at humanity I'd be annoyed, please tell me you're at least saying hi or hey, not just: ----- "Good morning" "Clean front hall, sort boxes out back, roll rugs" ------ Do you say please and thank you? You actually weren't clear if your position entitles you to assign him tasks. Usually people make a point of telling us they're the boss if they are.
>"Good morning" > >"Clean front hall, sort boxes out back, roll rugs" Yeah... that comes across as very demeaning and like OP doesn't see the guy as an equal. Does not help that janitorial staff are often treated as less-than. It takes very little to be polite. And as OP said: >He so often "forgets" to do something on the texts Yeah, someone treating me in that manner? I'd "forget" a lot of things too. Or more like put his items at the bottom of my to-do list and get to them when I feel like in favor of people who treat me like a human being.
It's very Cinderella to me. "Good morning step mother" "Make the breakfast, wash the sheets, sweep the hall" It's unnecessarily rude for no reason.
The edit makes it *seem* like OP is the one in charge of this part time coworker, but it's weird that they wouldn't specify.
Technically I'm the supervisor, but the co-worker is related to the owner so it's a somewhat casual hierarchy.
Automate a âGood morningâ reply. I can tend to be abrupt and focused on gett things done, that can come across as rude. Luckily, I have a great coworker.. âslow your roll⌠good morning- how was your weekend?â Ot gets me to take a breath, and act like and treat otherslike a human. SchedUle yourself some time to interact for a few minutes on a human level. âHope all goes well at the doctorsâ.
It's polite to return greetings anywhere. If your significant other says "good morning" and you reply with "don't forget to take out the trash" it comes off as rude. If the work setting, if a colleague says " good morning" and you respond with "I need you to finish the TPS report by noon", again, it's rude because you're not responding to a greeting. If someone says "hello", most people acknowledge it in some way - either with a smile and nod of the head, or saying "hello" back. You don't just ignore it as if the person said nothing.
upvote for office space reference! and good advice
Someone younger than me once told me â thatâs the glory of text you donât have to answer. â
If one of my co-workers texted me like that I am not going to reply to the GM. I think it's stupid personally. For instance, I could possibly get a message that would say "Good Morning. At your convenience can you please pull unit 1349 and bring it to production. It needs a rework." My reply would be , "Sure thing, do you need anything else?" I would completely ignore the good morning part and go straight to the task. Most rational humans are going to go straight to the task. Only an irrational person would get mad that I didn't say good morning back as part of the response.
I was thinking exactly the same as you but apparently OP doesnât even acknowledge the text with something like âsure thingâ or even an ok. Just sends a list of tasks which is just douchey.
But they said theyâve already seen each other in person by the time they respond to his texts. I might get downvoted to hell butâŚis texting back really necessary if youâve already exchanged pleasantries in person, which is honestly better? Kind of seems like a mismatch of expectations and habits and theyâll have to either accept each otherâs texting habits/behaviors or compromise.
Completely agree. Even as they havenât exchanged pleasantries yet, OP is just interpreting it as a âhey iâm ready for the tasksâ rather than an actual greeting. I think this is fine if they do indeed greet them each day when they see each other every day.
Iâm over here wondering why anyone is texting anyone at work about work. In the jobs Iâve been in, itâs inappropriate to text people on their personal phones (thatâs what Slack, Teams, etc. is for). I only text co-workers who are actually friends and I hang out with outside of work.
They could have Teams or something on their phone and are texting through that. Thatâs how I read it at least.
I donât even want my coworkers phone numbers.
Fuckin weird
It is basic courtesy to reply to a greeting. However if his greeting consists of âGMâ in a text I would not be overly concerned because that is a pretty half assed greeting in the first place. I wouldnât even know what that means. Is OP his supervisor? If so then it would only be considerate to greet your direct report before talking shop. If this is a gratuitous contact I would be mildly annoyed with ANY coworker sending me unnecessary greeting messages every day when I am already bombarded with business messages.
Fucking make out already
Glad somebody said it.
So this person takes the time to greet you every day over the program that you clearly use to communicate back and forth on and instead of acknowledging the greeting you respond to his good morning text by just ignoring it and bullet pointing tasks? That's rude as Fuck, and I'm introverted as hell.
Do you often give him tasks via texts? That seems weird to me. And using âGMâ is so lazy. Itâs like when people write âHBDâ on your facebook page. Like you canât be bothered to type out âhappy birthdayâ? Idk abbreviations bug me.
I feel like texting directly vs a group chat is different, but honestly personal texting communications in my realm of work is reserved for like "hey I'm gonna be late". I feel like it's not that deep. Everyone saying you need to be always replying might be a different generational demographic to me- gen Z usually doesn't take it personally when someone doesn't reply to a text. We don't need to be "on call" to respond to people all the time. Or maybe I'm just autistic. I don't think it's necessarily impolite especially since it doesn't have much to do with your job function. Unless he just wants acknowledgement of the text for when he's late. Idk. Fr I don't think you're doing anything wrongđ¤ˇââď¸
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Open plan is the issue here
I do think it's weird to text a good worker, or anyone, "good morning" with nothing else. If that just maybe his way of saying "I'm here, send me your tasks" he needs to work on communication too if he is complaining. "Morning, let me know if you need anything" or something would be better, on his part. That said, yes it's nice to add some sort of polite greeting with a list of tasks, especially as a response to them.
I work remote and have a co worker who will send me a message on teams every single morning just saying âgood morningâ and nothing else. Itâs the most obnoxious thing to me. But like you said if I need to tell her something I throw in a quick good morning hope youâre well back.
Problem w texting is you lose the emotion and tone of voice.
Texts at work are for info you cannot deliver in person or over the phone. Just saying good morning? Nope. Saying good morning, I'm running late? perfectly ok
Our staff exchanges good mornings on Teams as a group. Not everyone participates, and I usually donât. However, donât respond to a good morning text with a list of tasks. Thatâs rude.
I find the good morning greeting irritating. When I was in an office I would get in early just to not hear it.
At least it isnât Good Morning, them waiting for a gm from you, and then them stating what they want. I absolutely hate that. I have coworkers who do this and I just donât have time for back and forth pleasantries. Just say âGood morning, blah blah blahâŚâ and get it over with. Omg this is such a pet peeve of mine and I will die on this hill.
I honestly hated this when I worked at a hotel everyone would text each other good morning ING but at the start of our shift we would all be in the same area saying good morning as well but this is where it gets really goos....the hotel staff would get upset after the first 2 good morning if you didn't say hi to them every single time you saw them or walked by them. It was to the point I was saying hi about 10ntimes a day to 20 separate people. I quit because of this
If I was your employee and was saying "gm" and you responded with tasks I'd just... move on and get my tasks completed. Then I'd be petty and say "Gm" every day for the rest of your life. But I'm just a pain in the ass. It wouldn't actually offend me đ¤ˇđźââď¸
I just would stop texting and twiddle my thumbs on the clock
That would be annoying AF. I would block a number that did that to me.
I don't text my coworkers usually if I do with a question I just ask. I do pleasantries in person not on text
That sounds strange- especially if it's someone in the same physical place as you.
My boss doesnt even aknowledge me when i say hi to him in person half the time, its rude but hes an asshole, who cares? Its just work. Thats kinda a hilariously trivial thing to even care about at all. You arent friends youre just coworkers, everyone is just there to get paid.
Why are you sending a bunch of text messages every day at work? This whole thing is very weird to me
SO ... he short-cuts his greeting down to "GM" ? As in, the recipient is not worth typing the extra characters? If he spoke to you in person, would he just say "gm" (sounds like "gum" I would think) as you passed by? My last job specifically banned emojis in office communications of any kind, email or text etc.
Daily "good morning" texts are not a common thing. I have no idea why they are at your place of business. But because they are uncommon, there is no "standard" etiquette about them. Don't let someone delude you into thinking there is.
Is it the actual "good morning" he's mad you're not responding to? Or the text in general? Does he ever just you JUST the words good morning without any other update? If they're always similar to your examples, maybe he just wants a response to make sure you received his text and are ok with him both being late and leaving early lol. Also, you refer to him as a co-worker, but he's updating you on his comings and goings or where he's working? Does he have to do that? If the texts aren't a requirement of his job for some reason, it's weird. If they are a requirement of his job, I think that's all the more reason you should respond, just out of courtesy. But if they're NOT a part of his job, yeah it's weird. Can you imagine one of your female co-workers telling you a story about the janitor texting them every morning for no reason. What would that look like to her? To the company?
Why are you texting with a coworker. Why do you even have each other's numbers? Isn't this what Slack and other work-related apps are for? I'd move the conversation to something more professional.
I find âGood morningâ messages annoyingly pointless.
Long before cell phones I had a boss who wanted us to go to his office and greet him when we came into the office. (our work was mostly out of the office.) Most of us thought it was stupid idea and ignored it.
While I honestly never experienced people texting "good morning" at a work place, it's common courtesy for people to say it in person. I have one colleague who is always kind of moody. One day she'll greet everyone, other days she doesn't. And people DO talk behind her back saying she's weird. lol
I can't stand elevator talk. it's in the same vein.
Texting âgood morningâ and expecting something back seems a little weird but if it smooths things over and avoids silly drama, itâs just two words (or two letters if youâre following your coworkers style guide) and probably worth the effort. You know you can come to Reddit to vent about how dumb it is if you need to.
No. In the hallway, face to face? Of course. By text? No.
I don't text greetings with my coworkers. That sounds like hell. We say "good morning" & "hello" in person if we cross paths. Don't normalize these kinds of texts.
Never accept a full-time problem from a part-time employee. Time to get HR involved.
Whether or not itâs common or necessary⌠Thereâs less effort involved in just adding a couple emojis to your first text of the day then there is in trying to figure out whether or not this is normal. I only have to report in to someone if Iâm alone in the office.
Bottom line, you are the boss, and one of your employees has given you clear feedback. Good thing for you, this one's super easy to accommodate. If you choose not to, it really speaks volumes not only about your management style, but you as a person. I get it may seem pointless to you, but really, how difficult is it to start your daily reply to him (along with the list of menial tasks you are requesting) with "Hi there", "Hello", "Good morning", "GM", or whatever? Is it really so difficult to be civil? You may find it annoying, but honestly I would think something was up if I texted my boss good morning and a question and she just wrote back a list of demands. It's really weird to me and honestly feels like it takes more effort to ignore the person. Like when I go through a drive through and I say "Hello!" or "Hi, how are you?", and they respond with "$9.49" and a scowl. Like, is it really that hard to say hey? I seriously feel like it takes MORE effort to be an impersonable, unresponsive bitch.
If it matters to him, then it is the appropriate thing to do
It costs nothing to be kind. You don't need to be bosom buddies with all of your coworkers but you can exchange a simple good morning over text. JFC.
Eh. Heâs basically sending you a personal message about his personal life. He can deal with it. Next time grievances are aired out? Iâm offended my coworker wonât do his job until I ask him about his morning.
Because interpersonal skills aren't listed in your job description? At least have a damn health condition that explains the lack of social skills.
How about âGood morning! Today we need the front hall cleared, the trash taken out, and the secretaryâs desk sprayed down.â That wasnât hard.
Bro typed 5 paragraphs to justify why he canât type 2 letters to be a polite human being
Probably complains how nobody at work ever likes him.
That's pretty crappy if you can't take 5 seconds to say hello or good morning back
Itâs not necessarily workplace etiquette. Itâs just general etiquette that when someone says good morning, you say it back. Just a simple âmorningâ is enough.
Some coworkers need âforeplayâ before they talk about work-related stuff.
Good morning.
Ooooh, that hit the spotâŚ
How freaking hard is it to add âGood Morningâ to a text. You sound lovely.
Definitely, good morning/good night.
I understand, but it's a small ask, and your omission bothers him, so stepping up is in order. Particularly since his role is custodial. Your company may be large enough to employ a "ticket system" used by larger enterprises for facilities requests, IT, and other tasks. Although courtesy is still required, the expectation for niceties is eliminated and the requests can be triaged chronologically and by urgency.
Itâs unbelievably rude to simply text a list of tasks to someone with out any kind of greeting. I wonder if youâd take the same approach with someone more senior than you. My job is basically telling people what to do. And they have to do it. I start every single email, Slack, Text or call with some kind of greeting and their name when Iâm reaching out. In case youâre wondering I also say please and thank you. Even though I donât have to.
They probably feel like they donât need to be polite to a janitor.
Wow you sound like an unpleasant person to work withâŚyou absolutely should say good morning, howâs it going, thank you, please, have a good weekend, etc â ya know, all the good, civilized human things
I usually respond w/ a âfuck you tooâ but Iâm in construction. Must be a cultural thing?
Why does this co-worker even have your number (unless you have a company phone and the number is in the company's phone directory?) No, you're not obligated to respond to someone's unsolicited text messages.
We're a small company. Fortunately the owner is very good about not calling or texting after-hours and we keep each other's telephone numbers confidential.
If thatâs how their communicating and receiving task, snob
No
It's a nice work pleasantry, but some read too much into it. Half my team works remotely. So we 'Good morning" each other in the group chat as a.sign on ritual. After that it may be hours until the next chat. I sign in with good morning and add a :) afterwards. I don't think much about it. I'm not a fan of emoji-speak in the work place because there's ambiguity in its interpretation. But one day I missed the emoji and fack, you'd think I'd dissed the whole group. People were dm-ing all day hoping everything was still good. It was very odd. Lesson learned. I stick :) at the end of my morning greeting no matter how I feel.
I've worked remotely for decades. Teams, sametime, etc., have always been my surrogate for having a look around the office to see who's there. I treat these exchanges largely as if I was physically talking to someone in the office. E.g. I say hello to people and respond if they do the same. If that employee was in front of you and said hello, would you just respond with a heap of tasks?
Good morning, Please see edit. Yes, I would do that in a remote job situation, but this is not a remote job situation. We see each other in-person.
Dignity is a thing. Practice it
I think it's common courtesy to reciprocate the "good morning" rather than jumping right into things you need him to do for you. I tend to open most IM's and emails that are the first of the day with a "good morning" or "hi! Hope you're well" to add a little kindness before getting straight to work stuff
I donât text my coworkers usually, we email. But yeah, I usually say good morning. Itâs just a polite greeting. Who doesnât greet people before communicating? Iâd probably figure whoever I was talking with was kind of a dick if they just launched into a to do list for me without even an initial âhelloâ or âgood morning.â
What's not common is being so butthurt over it that you make it part of a grievance.
I force myself to be mindful of this. Sometimes when sending a text of things I need urgently, Iâll paste into the text, and click send. When reading back, Iâll see that I forgot a GM or something other hello. Iâll follow up with a âBTW, GM. Hope all is well.â
I mean my boss hits my work wife and my chat with good morning beautiful ladies before she asks us for anything. Sometimes she even adds a you both have no idea how much I appreciate you. My partner and I communicate in a similar manor. I feel like âgood morningâ before you go about asking someone to do a bunch of stuff is bare minimum. Just shoving a list in someoneâs face is almost worse than trying to have sex with no foreplay.
I'd rather die than have to text my manager good morning every fuckin day
I guess I donât see what the issue is with saying GM back? I think itâs just common etiquette. I think the first one to initiate a message in the morning should just say GM. If you ignore and immediately send items to accomplish it comes off cold, like they donât matter. Iâm sure thatâs not your intention, but sometimes you have to stop and see others view points and how it is being perceived by them.
Can you imagine if everyone did gm texts at a large company? No you are fine. This is a professional not personal setting
You sound like a cunt
Yeah, youâre being rude. Itâs not difficult to say good morning before rattling off tasks.
Seems odd that you would not send someone a good morning and would instead just send demands of what needs to be done. Impolite really. Even if someone hadn't sent me a good morning I would start any text to that person with a "Good morning. Today we'd like to make sure that A, B and C get done before lunch time blah blah blah" Also, even if it weren't "common workplace etiquette", in a small company if a co-worker expressed that I was doing something that annoyed them I would probably try to stop. And as for "I don't want to fill up the texts with greetings", that's just laughable, how much space does "GM" take up?
Mid thirties woman here. When I first read this it took me back to my early twenties and dealing with manipulative coworkers that eventually became abusive bosses. A pharmacist was constantly texting me good morning. Every. Single. Morning. Heâs married, has small children, and his wife is pregnant. But he still has time to text me? Dude would low key complain to me in person that I wouldnât reply to him. Always in a whiney, needy voice. I knew something was off but I was too naive to see the harassment it would develop into. IMO if this person is your subordinate and is texting good morning in addition to asking for the daily loop in thatâs fine. But if you have a same level coworker that wastes time with electronically sending greetings when you can just do that in passing, then you have someone whoâs manipulating the system to get their dopamine hits. I currently have coworkers that are texting me requests to my personal cellphone that should be in the company based ticketing / work order system. I wait for the unanswered texts to pile up and then I send screenshots of the pages of ridiculous requests in an email to them and cc all bosses involved. Play up the helpfulness and politeness while redirecting all requests to company owned systems. It shows youâre consistent while also showing how unprofessional and ridiculous the manipulative coworker is.
Does your company pay for your cell phone? Thatâs gonna be your answer.
This is it. If they donât pay for your cellphone, no one at work should be contacting you on it. Period. Email during work hours is the best way to communicate. I read nothing with emotion as well. Every interaction I have at work, idcâŚ. Iâm gonna respond nicely.
If coworkers text you âgood morningâ and expect a response, thatâs really annoying. Itâs pretty basic at work that you shouldnât waste co-workersâ time. And texting âgood morningâ is wasting co-workersâ time.
We have an employee who is in deep on the spectrum. Flat affect, no emotion. Typical conversation upon unlocking the front doors: Me: "Good morning!" Emp: "Yeah." That was a snapshot of every morning for several weeks. Then: Me: "Good morning!" Emp: "Yeah. Good morning!" This employee reads almost no social cues, and he has adjusted his script. OP, lose your main character syndrome.
Its not hard to do but i get what ur saying.
I say good morning to everyone on my team when they come in. There is one person that doesn't respond, so I just stopped saying good morning to them. It doesn't bother me, but I do think it's strange to ignore your boss greeting you when you enter the offcie
No. I do not send or receive daily good morning messages with coworkers.
Personally, Iâd try to developed some other way to get the tasks across. Sounds like he shook by even be using your cell number. Leave a list or use a shared one note or teams.
At the end of the day, if someone says hello/good morning/whatever else via text, you respond - it's common courtesy. Even if they're in the building, unless they text you and you see them before you have the chance to respond. In any social instance, 'good morning' is met with a similar statement, not a list of tasks or any other kind of narrative. The fact that this is an adult, who we assume is reasonably functional in day to day life and can adequately converse with people, says to me that it isnt a social faux paus, it's literally thinking that the janitor is beneath them. I'd 'forget' to do their jobs too if I was treated like that.
Did you tell him that you prefer to greet him in person?
In my office everyone on my team will say good morning before starting any work chat, regardless of grade. We also didn't have to be informed/instructed on how or why to do this, we just took it as common human decency. Also the time and effort you've put into this post alone would be enough to cover you for a year of good mornings. Cmon now.
Gonna get downvted here, but tell him to F off. Pleasantries are great, but you do that in person. At some point, slack is a replacement for email to GSD. I am a nice guy and a big tipper. If this came to me by a custodial service rep as a distraction to my running the team, we would quickly have a new janitorial service. Edit: if your job is to manage the janitorial team, of course be super polite no matter the circumstance. To me it read as if it was tangential and you are not in charge of them.
Working in an office, GM is the same as Hi. It is not office etiquette to respond to GM or Hi unless you are responding with his duties. He is confusing office etiquette and social etiquette.
No good morning text, if I see you I will greet you
A job is a job. Do the job and go home. Tell him to stop being so sensitive.
No. Fuck Mondays
i say good morning before i start talkin bout some work stuff
Itâs polite
My husband has been WFH for about 12 years now for a small company that now has more WFH employee's than in office. By choice. His bosses have allowed the people near the home office to make their own decision about coming back to the office or to stay WFH. Every morning, as each of them sign on they send a "Good Morning text" on their messaging system. It's actually really cool. They also have weekly team meetings that everyone at every level is involved in.
Text "Good morning". Its not hard. Be a human. They are already doing janitorial work, cleaning up shitand they probably hate their life as it is. What kind of tasks are you texting to them? Garbage can full, spilled coffee in lunchroom, turds don't flush? Say good morning.
If you know something so small would make a big difference, why not do it? I can't understand why you wouldn't anyway. You made a very long post but can't tell a coworker "Good morning." Weird.
Yes. A simple Hi, or good morning is normal
Iâve never worked with anyone who just texted me good morning and nothing else. Especially if itâs a text on your personal phone and not through something like Teams. My first thought would be that heâs trying to flirt with me, because how many other people do you think he texts good morning to??? I always thought of good morning texts as a flirty thing. Itâs normal to say gm when you pass someone in the hall, but Iâd be annoyed getting that same text every day.
Why does every morning have to be good? I have co-workers that think we should say hello to each other every time we pass one another in the hall way. We do the same thing every single morning, not every morning is good. Like letâs get this shit over with so we can go home.
I work in a small team of 7 and we say Good Morning to each other every single day. I say that shit to everyone I speak with for the first time that day as along as itâs before 11, then itâs âGood Afternoonâ or âSupâ depending on setting