Practically every email I’ve received in maybe the past year has started with “I hope you are well”. I even had an LLM draft a placeholder email for me and it started with the same thing. This has not always been the case and it’s strange to me that everyone I interact with begins their emails with this line. Frankly, it’s annoying AF.
What gives? Who started this? Why has it become so prevalent? More importantly, how do we stop it?
While I’m at it, if you work in tech / customer support, I urge you to speak with your supervisors to minimize the boiler plate copy paste trash you insert into your emails. People dealing with shit that’s not working as intended or desired do not have the mental or emotional capacity to wade through your platitudinal nonsense. Get to the fucking point.
I noticed a lot more people starting using it over the pandemic.
Annoying AF seems a tad hyperbolic, no?
Not at all. If it wasn’t so bothersome I wouldn’t have taken three minutes to post something about it. I hate it.
If this is all it takes to be annoying you either have the easiest time, or you’re perpetually angry due to the most inconsequential shit.
damn I guess we’re too privileged to find small things annoying now?
What do you mean?
the previous comment is implying that we’re not allowed to find things annoying and that if we do we either have nothing else going wrong in life or are perpetually angry.
this is one of the obvious tactics for bad-faith arguments that I never remember the names of.Hey Mac, I hope this comment finds you well.
“Annoying as fuck” indicates a high level of annoyance and/or frustration. My point is that if 7 words in the opening line of an email (which are trivially easy to skip or ignore) create that level of annoyance then something isn’t right.
I absolutely agree that people who are overly verbose, who step around the point they are making with flowery language, and use a thousand words when a few will do can make it considerably harder to extract a clear meaning, purpose, or instruction from that peice of communication.
But that isn’t what Op started with. Op said the opening line is what was annoying as fuck. That is what I was challenging them on.
Kind regards,
HelloThere.
Hello there, HelloThere.
I hope this message finds you on the toilet passing the best stool you’ve had this week.
What I find annoying as fuck is the disingenuousness of it all. Coming from a tech support agent I’ve never spoken before with is bullshit. Coming from someone I work with and communicate with on a daily basis is bullshit. The only time it should be used is coming from someone I’ve had a relationship with in the past whom I haven’t spoken with in months or years. That’s the kind of person who actually gives a shit if I’m well or not.
Incidentally, I used to get messages from Microsoft agents that started with “Dear, First”. That was just funny.
Best, oxjox
uh, ok. i really don’t care. people are allowed to find things annoying whether you agree or not.
More of the latter. When I’m dealing with the stress of due dates and troubleshooting things that aren’t working a needed, having to read through literal paragraphs of platitudes only to find one sentence regarding the support request can certainly increase my blood pressure. Sometimes the verbiage is so full of shit that it just comes off as spammy. I’ve deleted emails from support agents thinking they were phishing attempts.
Dev?
At least it doesn’t ask for a response, like “how are you” or “how’s things?”
It’s just an attempt to briefly acknowledge you’re asking a human your questions, rather than an algorithm.
You’re presumably capable of seeing and skipping the sentence without reading it, so go ahead. Nobody expects an answer, nor continued “courtesies” during back-and-forth replies.
Having thought about this, I think I will start using Ave like a Roman.
Ave Oxjox!
I use this when the tone of my email would otherwise be, where’s my spreadsheet motherfucker?? It’s nice to modify the overall tone of the email to something more friendly. I have a very curt writing style so I’m often concerned my emails will come off as blunt or demanding if I don’t include a pleasantry.
I work in a very friendly, informal field so I find myself doing little pleasantries to fit in, email-wise.
I would love if my coworkers were more blunt and honest.
“Where the fuck is my spreadsheet” is very concise. It tells me what you want, it tells me what my responsibility is, and it probably tells me the level of priority the issue is for you. “where’s my spreadsheet motherfucker” is similar but, depending on our relationship, I’d take that either far more seriously or more jokingly.
I have one guy I work with who speaks like this. He had to explain himself at first then I was like, yes please continue talking to me like a human. I’m more likely to trust people who don’t hide behind pleasantries and are just themselves with me.
I think you’re answering your own question here.
Your blunt coworker has to explain himself or risks being taken as rude by people who don’t know him. You yourself couldn’t determine if he was being rude to you without some additional context.
Without further context, you don’t know how to interpret an email that says where is my spreadsheet motherfucker.
In both cases, you’re saying further social cues are needed to determine if someone you don’t know very well is being rude or not. Hence, why people emailing people they don’t know very well in a professional capacity include niceties to convey context and tone.
I usually am pleasant, though. I would feel much less human if I just demanded things!
I can’t find this specific sentence in my inbox. So I guess there are some variations. It’s just the same platitudes as people asking “how’s it going” when greeting people. It’s a weird form of politeness I’ll never really understand, but is just there. It’s futile to try and change this, IMHO.
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Yes, “Dear” should be either something you send part-jokingly to your actually close colleague, or a sarcastic one, when someone seriously fucked up and you send them a message explaining that.
Dear OP,
I hope you and your family and friends and relatives and co-workers are wellTo nip it in the bud it’s entirely the influence of the overly polite English and since Brexit this has deteriorated (de-Tory-ated). Just saying 😀
Dear Tulip Fucker,
I’d like to express my dismay that…
It’s just a salutation. A pleasantry. It’s a formal way of opening a correspondence. It’s considered polite. You don’t need to put one if you don’t want to, but if your message is terse, it can come across as rude.
After some trepidation I’ll confess that I find these “hope you are well” also annoying though it depends who the sender is. What I find more annoying are the “OK, boomer” comments on the Internet. I mean what can you say after such a reply ?
That’s the intended effect – a condescending dismissal of being condescendingly dismissed. Not much you can say to a clear sign of disengagement.
🙂 Thank you for softening the pain.
One thing that I’ve found with junior staff is that they feel a need to be overly nice in their correspondence without realizing the interaction takes time.
I’m decades beyond being junior staff and I’m always nice in my emails. I don’t care how long it takes.
I’m 1(one) decade beyond, and I’m super short and direct with a hint of familiarity. It also works, because it feels humble. It is humble, because you can’t hide any second meaning behind “I do this, you do that, okay?”
There is a difference between nice and overly nice.
And I’m not talking about the time it takes you to be nice, but the time it takes others to process your niceness.
For instance, burying the lede on what the email is for in order to say “I hope this email finds you well”. Use that space to get to the point so that the person on your receiving end can process the email quickly. If it is a request, say please but nothing beyond that.
100% agreed. Please and thank you are standard. Pleasant tone and asking to work together rather than giving commands is also.
It takes so very little extra effort to be nice.
I’ve only seen it as a statement someone adds to an email when they haven’t contacted you in awhile.
That’s the appropriate usage, in my opinion. If I contact someone I’ve had a relationship with in the past, I might say something like hey dude. Been a while, hope you’re well.
When it’s the first time a support agent from Adobe or Microsoft interact with me from the other side of the world, I find it off putting and disingenuous (to say the least).
I blame AI. I notice ChatGPT is always trying to put that into my emails. Maybe because of that, I’m also noticing it in lots of emails I get.
I don’t blame AI but it was an AI generated email I requested (for testing purposes) where I first realized this is commonplace. It got me to wonder if others are using AI to generate emails as well.
I only see it in spam. Perhaps because “I hope you are well” translates easily. Though I cannot name instances of me using it, I most likely have as well.
Yeah bro bosses just love it when you go up to them and tell them all the shit you’re not gonna write in emails to customers because a guy on the internet said so. Hope this comment finds you because you are not doing well
