I hate emails!

Aero

Man do I really hate emails. I can do a lot of cool things with email like cold "call" people I'd never meet normally, but the amount of stress that goes into writing one is insane. Double check, triple check, foreskin check. I fear looking extremely stupid in immortalized text format. And the ride doesn't end after hitting send. Then I dread having typed something dumb without realizing it for a good hour or so afterwards. I'm deathly afraid of phone calls too. Something about not seeing their face. Oddly enough I love one on one conversations face to face.

Does anyone else hate emails/phone calls/other formal communication forms?

boreal cryptid

Aero i hate calls and instant messages the most. they are fine only in case of close friends.

did i say that i hate calls? yes, i hate calls. when someone calls me, i feel like i'm gonna throw up from anxiety. when i have to call someone, i often need a long time to recover after this.

emails are less stressful for me, because i can take time to write, read and respond.
i don't like being available 24/7.

no phone i did not "miss a call" i watched it ring the whole time

aceman

Aero
I kind of relate and agree but wouldn't say that I "hate" writing emails but it definitely makes me a bit stressed and overthink too much when I write an email, hell, sometimes I completely restart all over again. This also doesn't only apply to emails for me, sometimes it applies to just texting/messaging online (like right now) but without the stress, just more of the overthinking. I hate overthinking!!!!

Ross_R

The biggest problem I have with e-mails - and some other types of written messages, even posts on the forums - is that a good portion of them never receives any kind of a reply, after I spend 15-30 minutes into writing them. It is quite diappointing.
In e-mails especially I strongly except at least some kind of a reply, at least a negative one, but any kind of an acknowledgment that the message has been received is very, very nice. But I guess I cannot blame people much modern anti-spam systems pretty much treat any personal message via e-mail as spam, and a lot of people do not check their spam foldr. Especially on GMail, where it is hidden by default in the current interface.
Anyway, other that that, I kind of love writing. I call myself a writer for a reason, after all.

Aero

Ross_R
My experience has been different. I always get a reply, and I think it has always been a positive one. Certainly not the big blunders I stress about. And yet, the stress of writing a formal email remains after all these years.

kyga

Ross_R The biggest problem I have with e-mails - and some other types of written messages, even posts on the forums - is that a good portion of them never receives any kind of a reply, after I spend 15-30 minutes into writing them. It is quite diappointing.

Maybe, but I like reading them. I personally find it hard to reply to a huge forum post because I don't have that much to say.

I speak for the cubes

I used to very much be in the same camp until I had to deal with work emails.
And not in the sense of "having to write and read a few when something can't be managed another way" , but in the sense of dealing with everything that falls into our inbox.
Long story short : my workplace is very short-staffed. I'm in a department that only has two guys and my only coworker there is foreign and while he speaks both our local language and english very well, he is not very good writing in english and barely litterate in the local language so I have to deal with all the papers and emails.
And when you get a bunch of stuff to read, you learn to skim through and only look at the parts that really matter.
And that's when it hits me :
This goes both ways.
What's even the point of worrying about your turn of phrase and proper presentation and whatnot when the guy at the other end will be checking this between two sips of coffee, wishing he were home already and will just look for keywords and numbers ?
At this point, I keep everything as short as possible knowing full well that whomever reads will not even pay attention to whether I chose to say "cordially" or "sincerely" despite my fixating for ten minutes over it.
I know it's very easy to say "just don't think about it lol" and when you get anxious over things like this, it's not helpful advice. But it is true in this case : just don't overthink it. Be concise, just say whatever needs to be said because unless you work at the embassy, nobody will re-read your exact phrasing to see if you didn't mean something different. Your email won't be read in full anyway. It's not that easy but you can learn to distance yourself from the details and "learn not to care" .

Ross_R

kyga
Well, personally I when I see a good effort post or just a post that really resonates with me, I tend to reply at least something very basic, like, "this is really cool, and I had to write it out, reaction won't do".
It might be an old habit, stuck with me since the times of old pre-reaction forums, but I feel like it is the way. If someone really spent some times to write something good, I feel like I should at least let the dude know that I enjoyed the stuff.

tyl

Not really, depends who it is to, if I wanna talk to them by choice idc the medium, like emailing someone from a forum, thats fine, if its someone I don't wanna talk to, customer service/IRL people/etc then I feel like that regardless of medium. I dislike calls/voice and can't stand face to face.

mechap

This has little to do with the protocol itself, you just find discomfort with the corporate culture and the people you're interacting with. Personally I absolutely despise conference soykaftware (zoom, teams, etc.), I feel like they add, more often than not, a lot of unnecessary bloat to my system.

Aero

mechap
For me it's definitely the protocol. I'm not in a corporate environment but I still have a lot of stress as I outlined above. There are so many times I wish I could just talk face to face with people instead of emailing them.

kyga

Aero I'm gonna let you in on a little secret... no one really reads your emails that closely. 😆
Seriously. I write emails all the time. I do get a little worried sometimes about stuff like: oh did I spell everything correctly, or did that sound stupid?

But then I get emails from dozens of people every day. Sometimes there are typos, sometimes there are doubled words, sometimes the email barely makes sense. But you know what? I read it, process the info, and never ever think about it again lol. It's just an email, no one really cares all that much.

Unless you're like a lawyer or something where a single email could ruin your entire career... then your just screwed.

damas

I prefer using email. Normal conversations tend to be exhausting. They are inefficient, filled with pleasantries, small talk, and continue past the original topic of discussion. Emails are asynchronous; a reply is not immediately expected, and because of the lengthy nature of most emails, you are expected to be succinct and make the most of it. It’s not something you can take back and easily correct afterwards. Both parties are less emotionally present and feel an instinctual obligation to put comparatively more effort into what they’re writing.

Aero

damas
That's why I like real life. Much lower stakes, impossible to mistype (the closest might be a freudian slip?), and there's a lot more personality and body language which lets me read the other person. There's also a lot more opportunities to course correct and steer the conversation in real life. I'll gave a nobel prize to the man who lets me edit emails after they're sent.

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