Annoying people who just message ‘hi’… should be thrown into the sun

Have you ever had a colleague that kept using the IM system just to write, "hi"?

What do they want? Why can't they just be more clear? Why are they so annoying and should they be thrown into the sun? 

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, Simon Goode tackles a common yet surprisingly irritating workplace communication issue: colleagues who send instant messages that simply say "hi"—and nothing else. Drawing from a Reddit case study and its lively comment section, Simon Goode explores why this behavior can be so frustrating, especially on asynchronous platforms like email or chat, where quick and purposeful exchanges are expected.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Extreme Workplace Conflict Case Study

05:46 "Navigating Communication and Conflict"

08:19 Open Communication and Understanding

10:16 Boundaries and Clear Communication Tips

14:57 Clear Communication and Choices

Transcript

0:00

Foreign. Welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe now. I'm doing a number of episodes over this next week because my son's home from school on school holidays. For whatever reason, the school that he goes to breaks up three weeks before Christmas and then they're still on holidays for all of January. So for me that tends to be one of the most stressful times of year because I don't want him to just sit on Nintendo or iPad or TV just watching screens and interacting with nobody all day at the same time. I'm doing my work. Don't tell anybody, but I'm spending all day interacting with screens as well, even recording this episode and editing and all of the rest of it. So there's a little bit of an irony there, and I'm perfectly well aware of that, thank you. But I still don't want him to be looking at screens all day. And so I've decided that I'm going to minimize the amount of client appointments that I've got. I've still got a few now before Christmas, so I'm going to do those. But when I'm not doing them, I'm going to focus on preparing a number of different podcast episodes. And it's because I'm pleased to announce the official opening of my Essential Foundations for Managing Workplace Conflict. Now, in the episode today, I'm going to be talking about a pretty extreme kind of workplace conflict. It's a case study where we're looking at something that a colleague, a workmate, might have done to you. And look, I don't want to add to any existing trauma that you might already be experiencing, but we're talking about some pretty full on stuff here. It's the kind of person that just writes hi in the instant messages. Now, I'm sorry if that's triggering a number of different flashbacks for people, and if you need some additional counseling after the episode today, feel free to reach out to me. But that's it. You might be smiling and wondering why the heck this seems so serious. But what I'm going to do now is read to you a Reddit post that I came across where somebody was talking about a colleague that was annoying in this exact way. And then I'm going to share a couple of the comments that were under it, including the ones that had the most upvotes that obviously other people thought were good ideas as well. And then I'm going to just talk about some additional options that could be considered if you're dealing with someone who's irritating you. Now, here we're talking about somebody who just writes hi on the instant messengers. But it's funny, these little moments when we meet in workplace conflict and we do rub each other the wrong way at times. Some people resonate with us much more naturally. They have a style and approach that we appreciate. And by the way, that's probably the ones that are more similar to us. And then other people might rub us the wrong way. And sometimes it's even difficult to figure out why. Well, if it's part of the way that they communicate, like they say hi, or they interrupt you, or they speak very loudly, or maybe they come in and talk to you when you're in the middle of something. And for them that's a perfectly natural way to communicate with a colleague. But for you, it's quite irritating. You could probably also apply some of the different principles and the overall approach that I'm going to be talking about today as well. So let me read the case study and then we'll sort of have some initial thoughts and then we can go through some of those comments that were written underneath. So this is the post. It's something that really annoys me. Just get to the point. You can just write hi and then write what you need. Instead, all they write is hi, forcing you to respond. I just sit there thinking, what the f do you want? Just get to the point. Exclamation point, exclamation point. So I wonder about that. It's certainly eliciting something of a strong kind of reaction, but at least to me, I was smiling and almost laughing out loud, even reading the way that this person was putting it. But the number one comment went to another level. It was, people who want to have synchronous conversation on an asynchronous communication platform need to be thrown into the sun. I still find that to be a very good way of describing what we might consider to be not the most ideal pattern of workplace communication. However, you would describe this topic overall. So people who want to have synchronous conversation as if they're in the lunchroom saying, hi, how's it going? How are you, mate? Good morning, or whatever. It is the kind of things that you would do when you're on the phone or you're in the same room, but they're doing it on what they call an Asynchronous communication platform like email would be a classic example. You send a message, the other person doesn't receive it at the same time as you send it. They'll read it later, they'll interpret it how they want and then they'll send it back. So you wouldn't have the same kind of a conversation in the lunchroom as you would by email. Good morning. How's everyone going? How did this go last week? One point at a time, for example, or very non focused kind of questions, just overall kind of discussion. So that was the first comment that someone made was this is just completely unacceptable. And it obviously resonated with a lot of people because that had a number of different upvotes. And then the next comment that came across was also very popular. I ignore it until they write something of substance and then the immediate reply underneath that was something same. It's worked pretty well. Only had like two times when they never followed up with what they actually needed. Smiley face. So that's an interesting perspective, isn't it? They consider themselves to have solved the problem because they've ignored it. I do actually think that avoiding conflict or ignoring it or just letting something go through to the keeper actually makes a lot of sense in some situations when there's not a lot at stake, there's not much time and you're under pressure, there's a safety concern or whatever, like there's no reason why it must be done this way, then maybe there would be elements of their communication that you can just let go. If they're just having a whinge, if they're just feeling hard done by, but no one else is involved and you're not likely to change their opinion. Well, I do wonder how much benefit there is in continuing to interact with some of these people, but I don't know about this one. If it's your boss that writes hi, they might be using that as a way to check whether or not you're busy. Or if it's your boss that writes hi, they might wonder if you've started your shift or they might want an update about something, or maybe they are trying to connect with you. You've been off sick for a little while and they're not wanting to be overly pushy, but their intention ultimately is to support you or to build connection or rapport or something similar. So I don't know if avoiding and ignoring the high that comes through in the message would be particularly ideal in those kind of situations. If it's your boss and they're Using it as a way to check whether you're busy. It probably would be better to engage with them and negotiate a different way of communicating, I suppose. So let's have a look at some of the different ways that we could do that. For me, I think about all of this as a gradually escalating level of assertiveness. So I want to begin in a way that's really non offensive, not over the top. It's very collaborative. This is just my perspective. You might see things differently. I don't want this negative pattern to continue moving forward, this kind of thing. So there would be certainly elements of that. But then if you're not getting the kind of outcome that you're looking for, I don't think that it's necessarily an option just to continue to let it go. So there we might need to gradually escalate the level of assertiveness that we're using, depending on the kind of response that we're getting back. So where can we start? Well, let's think about the lowest pushy, the lowest pressure, the lowest way of sending criticism that we've got. It's probably a very open ended way of discussing the topic. Like for me, I think about that as sort of like pure curiosity. All I'm really wanting to do is to find out your perspective on this particular thing that we're dealing with. And so I might say something like, hey, hey, I saw your message in chat. Sorry, I was flat out, if it's urgent, then this is probably a better way to do it. Was that the case here or was there something else going on? So initially I want to be very open ended. I'm just trying to explore what's happening, including their perspective and including their intentions or motivations. I think one of the things that really puts us at loggerheads from the people that we work with is when we deal with relatively minor issues in a very adversarial kind of way. Like if they write hi and we just write back, what do you want? I think that's probably too far up the other end of the spectrum. So here we're just wanting to say what's going on? How can I help you? What kind of response are you looking for when you send me those messages? If it's something urgent, would that be the way that you would normally engage with me? Or would you do a different method there? This kind of thing? The second step I would often consider is ask for what you want. I don't know how many workplace mediation I have run where I don't think either side have made their expectations clear to the other party. So I often encounter people that are complaining about something that somebody else is doing. But when I ask them a question, like, have you asked them to stop? Or how have you communicated to them what you expect or what you need or what they have agreed to, at least from your understanding, they haven't. They will say things like, it's common sense or it's just being professional, or it's, I just like decisions that are very logical and they're illogical or something similar. And then we're stuck. There's no additional options that come to mind there. Whereas when we've been specific about what behaviors we're hoping that the other person changes, we. We've got a much higher chance of them actually doing it. So I would probably at the next step, just say something like, hey, mate, if there's something that I can help you with, just feel free to put it in the chat. You don't need to wait for me to respond like I'm being clear about what I want from them instead of assuming that there's something like, adults should know how to treat each other in the workplace, or it's just professional communication or whatever other kind of value that you go back to referring to. Which I think for me, they're inherently subjective, but especially if it's starting to annoy you, that tends to be the kind of thing that we think about in more of a black and white kind of way, like they're a nuisance as opposed to, we've got different communication styles, so ask for what you want. I think the third step needs to be some kind of holding the boundary, holding the line, clarifying expectations. Like maybe if you've decided that you're not going to respond to them moving forward, you wouldn't in the moment, you would leave it instead of just writing back high when that initial annoying high comes in. But then maybe a couple of hours later you could write, hi, mate, how's it going? Was it anything urgent? Just as I discussed the other day, probably email is going to work better for me if that's an option on your end, so I'm reinforcing it. I've already told you this. You've still done the thing that I don't want you to do. Could you please do this differently now? We could just sit there for as long as we need to. If that's our boss, maybe that's as pushy as we get. I think ultimately it might be a situation where it makes more Sense just to be accommodating and go with the flow, rather than thinking that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Well, maybe sometimes the squeaky wheel just gets replaced in the next round of redundancies that's coming through the organization or whatever else it might be. So clarify expectations. That's a bit more pushy, a bit more assertive. It doesn't have to be mean or harsh or judgmental or rude. We can still be very respectful, still be deferential. But we're saying, could you please do this differently? The fourth way that we could do it is what I think about is the positive confrontations based on a model developed by Barbara Pachter. She talks about what Ask check is the way of structuring your message or what, hey, mate, you've sent another one of those messages that just said hi. And then I might talk about the problem. The challenge for me is I don't know if there's actually something that you need from me or if you're just touching base. And then we go to the ask, could you please do this differently? If there's something that you need my input on, could you please give me a call or shoot me an email and we can organise a time to chat? So we've done the what? This is what you've done. You've sent another message. Hi, we've done the ask. Could you use email or pick up the phone next time? And then the final step that she suggests is check. Check for understanding. Check to make sure that there's no problems that that's not going to cause. So any issues with that on your end question mark? Like it's sort of, I suppose, also putting them on the spot to confirm that they're willing to go with what you've asked them to do. But they might say something like, well, I don't know, I don't have my phone with me or something. And then you can go into the problem solving collaborative sort of process from there. But I'd prefer them to have that whinge I don't have my phone when they're in the room with me, rather than me telling them to do something and then they leave and then they don't follow through. The next thing I think that we should probably consider is some kind of compromise or some kind of a reciprocal partnership. Look, if they haven't just done what we want them to do, maybe there's something else that you can offer them that's important to them. If you can do this, then this is how I'm going to make life better for you. Hey, mate, if you could shoot me an email instead of the chat, I'll be able to get back to you much quicker. If you. Then I. This is what I can do for you. In order for me to do that, I need you to do this. And I think the unwritten thing there is, I'm not going to do it unless your part of the contribution comes through. This has to be give and take. We're not allowing some kind of a precedent where the person feels entitled and they have a sense that they can walk all over the top of us. It's like, look, I get it, you want my help, you want me to come to the party, you want me to be flexible. In order for me to do that, this is what I need from you. And then I think the final step should probably be something like an ultimatum. This might be where you say something like, look, if this doesn't change, if I see another message that just says, hi, this is what the negative consequence will be for you. If you just keep sending me the messages of hi, I just want to give you a heads up that I'm not going to respond. So that's kind of the threat, that's the pressure that's holding the line. That's like, you are not going to push me around here. And then we put it as a choice. Or if you can give me an idea of the topic that you want to discuss, or if you can let me know what I can help with, or if you can give me a bit more information about the situation that you're dealing with, then I'll see what I can do to help, or that I'll get back to you quicker or I might be able to nip some of these issues in the bud, which would mean that you can end up finishing earlier. And that's perfectly fine with me. Assuming that all of the, you know, the I's have been dotted and the T's have been crossed, so to speak. So we put it as a choice. If things don't change, this is what's going to happen. If you write me another message, I'm just not going to respond, or if you can give me more detail, use a different method, whatever the thing is that we want them to do, I'll see what I can do to help or I'll get back to you quicker. It's kind of like we finish with the positive because that's going to have the most prevalence in their memory and attention. But I don't know, do you have a different thing that's worked for you for dealing with these annoying people that just write hi. Is it something that gets under your skin and it's caused you to lose sleep or maybe consume more coffee than you might normally or something stronger on the other end of the work shift? I suppose. And maybe you've had some success dealing with it in a different kind of strategy. I'd love to hear from you. If you want to shoot me an email, you can. It's podcastimongood.com and you can also just leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube or those kind of platforms and I'll usually do my best to see what I can do about responding to those as well. That that makes a massive difference by the way, to little podcasts like this. If you'd be willing to make a comment or leave a thumbs up or give a five star review or whatever the system is in the platform that you're using, I very much appreciate it and thank you very much in advance if that's something that you would consider doing. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. I do appreciate it and hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills podcast. Bye for now.