Asklemmy

43852 readers

1103 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

When / why / how did "I hope you are well" become a standard email intro? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by oxjox@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

71 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] oxjox@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If I'm sending it to one person I'll open with "First," or "Hey/Hi First,". For multiple people, "Hello,".

I like to get to the point and hope to influence others to do the same. I have other coworkers who send me messages in Teams that literally just say "Hello". I mean, come on. You're going to distract me with "Hello" and not ask me a question? I'm not responding to Hello or even can I ask you something. Of course you can ask me something, that's what I'm here for and that's why we have the ability to communicate with each other. Spit it out kid!

[–] D61@hexbear.net 1 points 6 months ago

"Hello" is probably the best answer but I find myself having a knee jerk "but it seems too informal to use in a work setting" that I will need to get over.