Have you ever ever been deep within the zone, lastly making high quality progress on a difficult venture that had stumped you for weeks, when the audible, abrupt, triple-ping alert of a brand new Slack message pulled you out of your concentrated state, solely to learn a easy message of:
And nothing else.
You might be a sufferer of so-called “hey hanging,” through which a coworker sends a short greeting immediately message however doesn’t truly let you know what they need — main you to, naturally, enter an anxiousness spiral of hypothesis about whether or not you’ve got completed one thing horribly fallacious or if you happen to’re about to get pulled off job into one other venture.
Or perhaps you’ve got been the one to ship a “hello hello” or “heya” or “hiya” after which forgotten to observe up.
The observe of “hey hanging,” because it was referred to as in The Wall Road Journal, is a small manner through which coworkers can discover themselves out of step with one another, particularly within the age of distant work, which research counsel has negatively impacted communication within the office.
Employees who interact in “hey hanging” could not see the hurt in it, or they may intend to ship a fast follow-up however get distracted or pulled into one other job themselves. No matter why they do it, some individuals on the receiving finish are begging them to cease.
There’s even a web site devoted to condemning the observe: nohello.web.
“Please do not say simply hiya in chat,” the web site says, “Think about calling somebody on the telephone, going hiya! then placing them on maintain…”
“Simply ask the query!” the web site reads, together with a whining emoji.
The Journal talked to pairs of coworkers who had completely different views on the topic. One model strategist in Chicago informed the outlet when her colleague “hey hangs” her by way of textual content, she merely does not reply till they ship a observe up with the precise query.
However the “hey-hanging” colleague informed the Journal she thought beginning with a easy greeting was simply being well mannered.
“It is type of impolite to leap into somebody’s texts and word-vomit no matter I would like,” she stated. “However now I am seeing it is a factor that folks do not essentially love.”
Finally, if a colleague commonly “hey hangs” you and you discover it disruptive, it is best to talk to them brazenly and actually that you just’d desire extra info within the preliminary attain out, Constance Hadley, a professor of administration and organizations at Boston College, informed the Journal.
Partly, as a result of I may relate to having my editor “hey cling” me, I hesitated a second earlier than bringing this story as much as her by way of Slack.
However she responded in a short time.
“ugh i do that to ppl on a regular basis,” she wrote. “and that i really feel horrible.”
