How to gently enforce “nohello” to a coworker?

I am a huge proponent of nohello in the workplace - I get way too many Slack messages and other interrupts to waste time on pleasantries. I keep my Slack status set to "nohello.com" as a way to remind my coworkers of this, and generally don't respond to Slack messages unless they contain something I can respond to. Most of my coworkers are fine with this, and many do the same.

However, I have one coworker who doesn't seem to notice or care. Her messages to me always look like this:

Her: Good morning!

Her: How are you?

Then silence until I answer her and engage in pleasantries, after which she'll finally get to the point. This can occupy several minutes or more as I answer her, go back to what I was doing while waiting for her to respond, then get interrupted again when she responds a few minutes later with another pleasantry, etc. I've tried ignoring her until she asks an actual question, but she'll just wait (possibly assuming I'm busy/afk?), meaning her question doesn't get answered.

How can I politely inform her that I need her to get to the point immediately and not waste my time on pleasantries? Ignoring her means her question doesn't get answered because she won't ask it until I respond to her pleasantries, and also means I am constantly low-level aware of her hanging ping, which makes it hard to concentrate on my work. But if I don't ignore her, I waste a bunch of time engaging in meaningless "hi, how are you, how was your weekend, what are you up to?" back-and-forth in Slack that constantly interrupts my flow. This also encourages her to continue opening with pleasantries, further interrupting my flow later.

To be clear, my issue is not with pleasantries qua pleasantries. I don't mind chatting with coworkers around the lunch room or in the halls, or in the general-chat Slack channels. The issue is that when a coworker sends only pleasantries instead of asking their question in their first message, it repeatedly breaks my focus (one interruption per pleasantry exchange, often spaced out over several minutes to hours depending on when we're each next able to respond on Slack) and delays me from answering the question.

Just saying "hey stop with the pleasantries and get to the point" is likely to come across as rude to her. Her job is focused around people management and contractor interfacing, and I suspect some of the disconnect comes from the fact that her job normally requires her to be extra-pleasant and friendly, while mine is all about speed and getting to the point.

What is a polite way to make clear to a coworker that I will not respond to empty pleasantries in Slack, and she needs to ask her question up front before I will respond?

23 Answers
23

It's important to remember that other people can't read your mind. It's perfectly fine to have ways you prefer to do things, but you need to let people know what your preferences are before you expect them to respect your preferences.

Along these lines, ignoring your coworker's pleasantries in the hope that she'll jump into her question for you isn't going to work. By ignoring her, you're not giving her any indication why you're not responding. It could be that you're busy with something else, away from the keyboard, or just being rude. She's not going to guess that it's because she broke an unwritten rule you haven't communicated to her.

(You have put a link to nohello.com in your Slack status, but that's an ineffective way of communicating something you really want people to notice. I know that I never pay attention to Slack statuses myself. The only thing I want to know is whether someone is available or not, and Slack reports that automatically.)

What you need to do is tell your coworker what your expecations are. I suggest going along with her pleasantries the next time she reaches out to you. Then, after she gets to her question and you finish helping her out, you can end the conversation by asking her not to spend so much time saying hello the next time she talks with you. Be very polite and pleasant when you do so - you haven't communicated this to her before, so she hasn't yet done anything wrong.

If she continues to try to say hello before getting into the point, you can be a little bit more direct. Don't be rude, but you can respond to her saying "hello" with, "Hi! Do you have a question? Like I said last time, I appreciate it when we start conversations by getting to the point - I think it saves us both time :)"

In the grand scheme of things, spending 5 minutes going back and forth chatting with a coworker is not the worst thing that will happen to you. It's fine for you to prefer a more direct style of communication and to ask others to communicate with you that way. But at the end of the day, you have to choose your battles. Do stand up for your preferences, but keep in mind that this isn't something worth being confrontational or rude about.

Your co-worker likes to begin conversations with small talk, which is a style of communication that some people prefer. They find it necessary or comfortable to engage in warmup dialogue before stating their intent. These preferences are developed over time and are hard to unlearn. So let's assume that permanently changing your co-worker's communication habits is not a feasible option.

If you respond to her small talk with your own small talk ("How was your weekend?" "It was nice, how was yours?") then you're prolonging the conversation and delaying the point.

Avoid saying "get to the point" or telling the co-worker to stop the pleasantries. That would likely be seen as rude, and could sour your professional relationship with your colleagues, especially if small talk is normal for the office culture. While I'm not suggesting you confirm to social norms that make you uncomfortable, I do recommend partially adapting to the social expectations of your workplace, as likeable employees tend to cooperate and advance better.

Therefore, make a compromise between your and your co-worker's preferred styles. Respond politely, maybe with a brief greeting to match theirs. Then immediately follow up by asking them what they need, because they probably need something from you. If communication involves a messaging service (like Slack) then you may want to combine them into a single message.

For example:

Her: Good morning! How was your weekend?

You: Hi, I am doing well, thanks. How can I help you?

Minimize your own small talk, and prompt your co-worker with a direct question, so that her next response should get to the point.

Lots of other answers here, but let me focus on this one thing and expand on an earlier comment I made:

“How can I politely inform her that I need her to get to the point immediately and not waste my time on pleasantries?”

Do you get paid by the hour? By speed of response? Is the speed of your response connected to your salary?

Look, if you work in an environment where you are expected to be immersed in code as well as be available in chat, that is the deal: You are expected to code and you are expected to be available to others regardless of how they interact with you.

Your bosses, managers, etc… are expecting you to code as well as be available for consultation via chat. If this somehow annoys you, you need to bring that up with your boss, manager, etc… But the reality is you cannot control how other humans will interact with you. And yes, loss of focus due to context-switching might be annoying… But guess what? That is the deal of working in a situation like that.

At the end of the day I am reading you saying this, linking to that ridiculously overwrought “No hello.” site and have to think: You utterly cannot be frustrated at a simple, basic and universally expected human pleasantry?

In my mind—as someone who codes and works in tech—there are too many ways of avoiding human contact out there and too many nonsense excuses for not saying “Hello!” or “How are you!” or “Hey! You busy?”

I am not a robot or a piece of machinery. If someone just sends me a blunt chat message saying, “I need your help.” without a basic intro text, either the sky needs to be falling or that person is Chicken Little (aka: Henny Penny). And in the world of faceless communication—like chat—that will only wear me down more and make me more bitter.

That said—and looping back to the beginning—I sense something else might be an issue and the solution to that is not something anyone here can recommend. Perhaps your organization needs a ticketing system of some sort. Perhaps you need to walk over to talk to someone instead of being in chat because sometimes people in cubicles right next to each other avoid doing that. Perhaps it’s something else.

But at the end of the day, if I were told I need to adhere to some “No hello.” policy, my response would be to invoke my “Goodbye!” policy and walk out the door.

UPDATE: Two people in the comments (that have now been moved to chat) have stated the following so I am addressing this stuff head on. This is from the original poster:

“I lose 10-15 minutes of work every time she asks me something…”

And this is from another commenter who disagrees with his answer:

“It’s something of an axiom in software development that it takes approximately 15-30 minutes to refocus on work.”

I have been doing software development for years. While it can be frustrating to stop your workflow, there is no “axiom” specific to software development that states it takes 15-30 minutes to refocus. That claim—as well as the one that states “I lose 10-15 minutes…” sound so incredibly exaggerated it’s laughable.

So again: If your job involves interacting with human beings, you cannot expect them to be able to read your mind and provide you the exact question that you can answer in less than 5 minutes. If you are dealing with human beings, you need to deal with social pleasantries. If not, are you really telling me that someone just blurting out, “This specific thing needs to be done. Do it!” is actually more pleasant?

In the companies I work or worked in, the initial "hello" was less of a chit-chat and more of a way to poke someone and check whether they can freely read the IM.

The idea being that if someone does not respond to the initial "hello", it means that it may not be the best moment to send them something which they may not want to see displayed (presenting, someone is watching the screen, etc.)

You may consider this in your "nohello" approach, and take into account that aspect of the "hello" too.

Back in the day, I worked in an environment where I managed a lot of people remotely, and had to deal with many of their issues as soon as possible, so couldn't just check messages periodically: they needed to be able to interrupt me.

At the same time, I had to program and debug, holding large and complex data structures in my head, only to have them destroyed by greetings.

I had an away message auto-response something like:

"Please don't ask to ask: just ask! Asking your question in your first message means I can triage it correctly. Otherwise, I might assume you're just chatting, and leave off responding until I have time."

And I was ALWAYS marked as away.

A goodly proportion of people thought it was funny to say "Can I ask you a question?" at least once in response to that, but I would just reply with "Heh - sure, whatcha need?" or something. Everyone gets to make The Joke for free. I considered it a tax I had to pay.

Some small proportion of people - maybe one or two percent - just would not get the idea. They would exchange pleasantries and stuff first, even if they were on fire. I put it down to a cultural thing, and treated handling that minority of people as another time-tax.

The vast majority of people "got it" and even appreciated the sped-up comms.

A few needed a little gentle poking, which I did by making fun at myself:

"/me flails and froths and screams 'Don't ask to ask!' as his head explodes :P Hey there, whatcha need?"

To pleasantries, my first response always ended with something like "whatcha need?" - I picked that over "what's up?" (because some places that just means "howdy"), and over "can I help with something?" (because that's way too formal, so I saved it for strangers randomly messaging me). This breaks out of the pleasantry-loop as fast as possible.

Ultimately, you will save yourself a certain amount of time with a nohello, or don't-ask-to-ask policy. Past that point, you have diminishing returns, and it's best to eventually give up on people as lost causes. By reading the posts in this thread, you've already likely lost just as much time as you would've saved by forcing this one holdout to learn messaging etiquette.

As others have suggested, a ticketing system, or just periodically checking your messages at scheduled times, can also help reduce this problem, though they are not always feasible.

I work for a small/medium sized company. When we grew from just being one office, where almost everything could be discussed face to face, into a much larger one, with offices in multiple time zones and countries, this issue was brought up.

In a company wide event, where everyone was present, we discussed ways of how to improve communications and we agreed on few things:

And I think the key point was to have this discussion without pointing any fingers. It was done in a neutral and constructive manner and without naming or shaming.

We didn't enforce any of these things, they were more a sort of soft guidelines, but they worked quite nicely. Now, a couple of years since we agreed on these rules, they have become somewhat forgotten so it might be a good time to bring this topic up again.

Get a ticket system. You seem to be annoyed that people are using a chat system for chatting and you would like them to use it for sending you tasks. I think it's unreasonable for you to expect 1) people to just change their nature like that 2) expect people to use a system that encourages chatting and informal communication in a way it wasn't really intended without a (real) explanation. You can't just dictate how people behave like that and frankly if you go on like this I think it will hurt your career.

You're really looking for a ticket system where people can put in tasks, you can prioritize and do them when you see fit without the chit chat, but I would still recommend using Slack in scheduled blocks throughout the day to answer peoples' questions.

You mention that you are using Slack. I've never used it, but it seems to have a feature called Slackbot which you can configure to automatically ignore the "hello"s while still being polite.

<sub>Setup and use auto-reply on Slack

To get started, open the group on Slack. Next, click the group name and select Customize Slack. It will open the Customize Your Workspace page. By default, it will open Emoji tab. You need to switch to Slackbot tab.

Here you can setup keyword-based auto-reply. For example, you can send a particular text, when someone says “Hi” or “Hello” (...)</sub>

_{Emphasis mine. Source: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/set-up-and-use-auto-reply-on-slack}

So just configure an auto-reply for messages containing "Hello", "Hi", "Good morning" etc. and have the Slackbot reply with something simple that hints for them to go straight to the point:

Hello there! How can I help you?

Or, if you want to be more explicit:

Hello there! I recently started following the "nohello" rule for Slack conversations, I hope you find it as useful as I do :) How can I help you?

That way you don't have to waste your time replying to the "hi"s and "howdy"s, and hopefully the first message you see will be the actual question.

Even if this kind of configuration falls short of your needs, there probably exists some kind of plugin that fits the bill.

EDIT: Some actual Slack users are commenting that Slackbot does not work for one-to-one messages. What a pity! The answer still applies in a general sense, though: use Slack's features and/or plugins to detect and auto-reply to generic greetings. If you manage to do so, you'll save yourself some time, and your coworker will eventually learn to avoid that kind of chit-chat and get straight to the point to avoid the canned response.

One common option I've seen in companies I've worked in was to have multiple Slack channels, one for work and one for general chat. You can then enforce a strict nohello policy on the work channel on the understanding that the general-chat channel may not receive priority response.

This can be explained in the header for the channel as a rule, and therefore not be considered rudeness.

You can enforce it with a Slack bot scanning for keywords and short messages as other answers here have suggested.

One way I used to get around this was to set an away message.

In some chat clients, you can use a setting or plugin to automatically reply when a new conversation starts. So if you set this message to something generic like "Hi, how can I help?" you don't have to write it yourself.

This does have the potential to not make much sense if they either jump straight to the question or say something that doesn't quite flow with this response, but if this cooworker is predictable enough then it's an option.

An alternate way I have dealt with it is to reply to their greeting, and immediately close the window.

It'll pop back up again when the person has an actual question, and given that it takes less than a second to do (HiEnterAlt+F4) you haven't really lost any time. They get their greeting, and maybe afterwards you could hint that they could merge the greeting and the question if you get a chance to. In my experience they will ignore you though...

The other answers in here are fantastic but I still wanted to add another option, just reply back with nothing more than a simple acknowledgement:

Your coworker clearly prefers to communicate using a chatty protocol by default but I've found that most humans don't mind switching to less chatty ones when prompted to do so. It definitely helps to sprinkle in some pleasantries, at least every now and then, to appear approachable.

It doesn't help to ask them "What's your question/can I help you?", because there is still some time lost from typing that, and even more from waiting for the other person to type out the question (if they have chosen to stop the pleasantries).

The better way is to assume that the other person(s) will never change and to find a balance between what is comfortable for you and the other person. In this case it's twofold:

Always be the role model and type out your hello+pleasantry+question/information in the first block (I don't see a problem in adding a pleasantry if it's all in that first block)

Don't check your Slack channels. Disable the text popups if you have to stop it from distracting you (but still keep the number notifications to know if there are any). Then respond after finishing off your task or after 15-20 minutes from the first occurrence of messaging.

Number (2) will have one of two results: either you will have more comfortable working conditions (indefinitely), or someone will complain about your slow responses, in which case you reply that you don't like getting distracted at work (avoid details), however you might respond quickly if you see something that is important to respond to.

I believe this solution will get you to where you want, keeping in mind that you can't change people, but you can make your life more comfortable (without offending anyone).

Nohello is similar to Crocker’s rules - the basic idea of both is to optimize conversation for information flow, not for pleasantries.

An important attribute of Crocker’s rules has always been that they are advisory, and do not place an obligation on anyone else. You can’t force someone to reciprocate.

It’s nice that you give someone license to get their answer faster, but you are crossing a line if you expect others to adapt their norms to your norms.

There are a lot of answers already, but I think there's a point that merits mentioning here.

You have your expectations about communications. You have your reasons for those expectations. However, you appear to be ignoring or dismissing your coworker's expectations about communication.

It is possible (perhaps even likely) that your coworker values team relationships more than you. Some people find that social interactions between team members is beneficial to their productivity, much the same way that you feel that getting a question at the start of an IM communication is beneficial to your productivity.

While you could argue over who is "right", the reality is that everyone has their own particular style of communication. Note that there are lots of different ways to categorize these communication styles, so take any specific descriptions with a grain of salt, but the idea that individuals vary in how they communicate is pretty easy to verify through observation.

With that in mind, you may want to consider whether it is truly worthwhile to try to get your coworker to adhere to your own communication style when messaging you, rather than her own.

If you sent her an IM asking a question, adhering to your "nohello" policy, and she replied with this...

It makes me uncomfortable when you start off a conversation without a basic greeting. I'm a person, not a computer, and it feels disrespectful when you can't take a few moments to send me a simple greeting.

...would you adjust your communication preferences to meet her expectations?

What about coworkers who know that she prefers a more social beginning to communications, whereas you are bothered by them? Are they expected to remember the social requirements for each individual coworker, and abide by them? What happens when they initiate a group discussion, and different members of the group have different expectations?

My advice is to adhere to your "nohello" policy with her when you initiate conversations with her, but to respect her own communication preferences when she's initiating the communication. In the grand scheme of things, having to reply back with "hi" to one coworker's messages may be slightly frustrating, but it isn't going to have a huge impact on your productivity. Be glad that the rest of your coworkers appear to be on board with your "nohello" policy.

It's not ideal; neither of you get what you want 100% of the time. Realistically, though, it is easier to try to control how you initiate communications, rather than to try and get each of your coworkers to remember your specific communication preferences, and how they may differ from other coworkers, and apply them as appropriate.

No matter your reasons for your personal preferences, they are just that: personal preferences. Trying to tell someone else that their personal preferences are objectively wrong will only hurt your professional relationship with them, and even if you don't value that, others do.

Her: Good morning!

Her: How are you?

You: I'm fine, thanks for asking. Hope you are ok, too. How may I help you?

And that's is.

With this you:

In person you may talk to her and say about you IM preferences. But I suspect, from experience, that a "greeting person" will remain like that. So it's up to you to conduct the conversation in a way that does not waste your time.

It's not entirely clear in your question if this greeting is part of the preamble to a question, or a default reaction which blocks questions.

Assuming it is the former, it suggests that your opposite number isn't really adjusted to the asynchronous nature of instant messaging (IM). You can possibly improve this by injecting more away-from-the-keyboard (AFK) time within a 'conversation' than you would normally. This could be either making a short, non committal response or just adding some delays into the middle of a conversation (this may depend on if your IM app is your primary task, or if it's a secondary function). Treat it as a reminder to get up and stretch your legs maybe.

As a way of responding to an 'are you there' ping, you can also consider a more neutral response, along the lines of :), ... or ? - these might be too abrupt to throw in 100%, but they are worth considering as a way of replying without consuming too much effort. You shouldn't feel that replying like this, then going AFK is a bad thing.

:)

...

?

It is not impolite to simply answer as follows, even a canned response: I appreciate your pleasantries, however, as I am almost forever extraordinarily busy I would appreciate it if in future we could get directly to the point without any of that. You may notice that my status is nohello.com which has some explanatory notes.

Of course, depending on all circumstances, it may be that your co-worker is pleasantly interested to know you.

What would you do if you met her in a meeting, the hallway, outside of work, etc? And she said 'hi' to you in those cases. Would you do the same passive-aggressive actions if meeting in person? If not then why is an IM conversation different?

We have lost much of our inter-personal skills with the modern communication methods (and I work in technology so I'm guilty of this). We're losing the ability to actually talk to others. This goes for both business and outside of work. Things we would not do in person are though of as OK when communication electronically.

I think this problem comes from the lack of understanding instant messengers. Your view of Slack (and maybe other similar tools) is very pragmatic, that is, the no-hallo policy (which I like too).

Solving this is not about trying to read anybody's mind. To me your colleagues just don't know yet how to efficiently use such tools and need to be educated.

It's not about what you or they like. It's about how these tools are supposed to be used. You as a more experience user are doing this right whereas some of your colleagues not (yet).

I'd have a chat about this issue in your team-meeting so that everybody is aware of the purpose and usage of instant messengers.

All the workarounds with automatic answers or tolerating "Hi"s anyway are wrong. People should just learn how to work with Slack, etc.

There might be a technical solution to this human problem. I would look into creating a slackbot that if a message is from her, and it's the first message in a while, and it contains a white-listed greeting word, automatically messages her back something like "hey, what's up?". That way you don't confront her and you don't waste your time.

You want to minimize conversation time and interruption from you work flow and concentration. If you maintain this No Hello policy you will quickly become known as a curmudgeon and be pushed out of the flow of communication and engagement. People don't like anyone who considers their time or self inviolable. In order to both save time and conform to societal norms (in order to stay in the loop and enhance your perceived value), on the initial Hello, anticipate the routine and respond with more than is requested, such as:

"I'm great today, Suzie. Went kayaking this weekend and feel refreshed. Are you enjoying your day? Working on XXX and in the zone, so I really need to get back to it, so how can I help you?"

This will let your coworker know you're available for necessary communication but don't want to waste time, will eliminate your waiting for responses to meaningless back and forth - thus getting you back to work sooner, and prevent a reputation that will do you no good.

A simple response of:

Hi, what's up?

Is all that's needed to get the conversation flowing.

You're getting bogged down thinking this coworker is genuinely asking how you are doing in life/work/spirit, etc... They may simply be checking that you're available to talk - hence, when you don't respond they don't continue sending information...

Even if they are genuinely asking - by skipping a response and only soliciting what the coworker needs from you, you'll get to the point a lot quicker.

Asking people to not say hello or some sort of greeting is only going to come off as strange (at best), or hostile (at worst).

Just tell her, every time. Be polite at first and over time get more to the point, until you stop answering the initial pleasantry. However, make sure everyone knows that this is how you need to work (and you've communicated this with your manager).

Thank you for your interest in this question.
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