there are people out there who really, truly can't wait to just "hop on a quick call". like, genuinely for the love of the game. and they have to be stopped.
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I've been wondering, and maybe you or anyone else in this thread knows- does the English idiom that we "hop" or "jump" onto calls persist in other languages? Do they say their equivalent of "jump" or a totally different idiom?
Yeah, but you can put off responding to the email till a convenient time -- as opposed to having to deal with an interruption in realtime. For the same reason, I don't understand how people function with constant text notifications.
And a lot of the email ping-pong comes from people who just want to turn an email exchange into an ongoing relationship where they keep asking new questions for months.
As a young lawyer I was taught if you called people (especially if you caught them off guard) they'd be more likely to give you what you needed negotiated. Actually works, since most people won't be a dick on the phone.
I feel this. To the folks who replied that a quick call can replace a lot of written back and forth, yes, but only if there’s a clear objective and some structure to the “hopping on the call.” Too often, folks hop on a call to think out loud. That’s one thing contributing to this fatigue.
There’s got to be a way we as a society can eliminate these kinds of time wasting efforts and streamline productivity so that we can put our time to better use. I’d love it if you could hop on a quick call to spitball some solutions.
Unless your boss is insane. I had one who would say it would be a quick call and then 5 hours later (not joking) I’m trying to make any excuse to hang up 😭
At work the other day I had my Teams in Do Not Disturb mode. FOR A REASON. Someone phoned me because "I was in DND". Wasn't important, just wanted a chat. Unreal. 🤬
They were just trying to do their work, but now they’re working through an hour of your thoughts for you - that you should have summarized in text first.
No, see, the thing is, I don’t want to be part of the solution in any way if you aren’t able to clearly articulate the problem in succinct writing. I’m doing OTHER things. Do. Not. Call. Me.
That’s all well and good until the reason I want to hop on a quick call is to clarify something you didn’t articulate clearly in succinct writing. And I can do that much more gently on a call, which doesn’t require me putting it in writing that your work wasn’t up to scratch.
Are we at an impasse?
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for a scheduled meeting with a published agenda, run by someone that respects others’ time. You can’t do 100% of everything asynchronously. Just nearly everything.
This I can agree with. I always ask by Teams first whether someone is free, and my colleagues always answer with either “now”, or with a time when they expect to be available.
I think people need to respect that give and take.
As long as you go on believing that, you risk others thinking you don’t want to be part of the solution because you want to be the problem.
(I’m a trained writer/editor. I know I don’t always get it right, and that other people’s input is vital for helping me hone my work.)
Oh, feedback? I’m a UX designer, we have formal rigorous processes for that, that avoid bias, and provide statistical significance. Drive-by opinions are occasionally helpful but not often.
(I wrote this before I saw your second response. I’m leaving it because I think it is something that some in this thread also need to consider. A little flexibility in how you work always goes a long way towards smoothing workflows.)
obviously a lot of the impulse to discipline workers comes from class antagonism but a significant contributing factor is that a lot of folks have no idea what work is or entails or what it's like to be genuinely busy because their only job is to create messes for others to clean up
Dude, be careful out there. Soon some jerk will decide that being a Spurs fan is proof of gang membership. That's just nonsense of course. They're thinking of Millwall.
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It's only ever to attempt to evade a paper trail.
And now I have to email you a transcript of the call because you *will not* accurately remember what we talked about
Chat message <-> Email <-> Phone Call <-> Show Up Unannounced At Your Desk
it was awesome
Are we at an impasse?
I think people need to respect that give and take.
(I’m a trained writer/editor. I know I don’t always get it right, and that other people’s input is vital for helping me hone my work.)
I don’t mind Scheduling a
Call if needed but I want it on the calendar