Let’s Agree to Disagree

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.

Part of doing any job well involves getting feedback, and that’s also true for my position as the Work Friend columnist for The New York Times, which I have been for the past six months. Over that time, I’ve received dozens of incisive, critical, thought-provoking and sometimes even vaguely insulting responses, most of which have made me think — and in some cases rethink — my answers to questions that I’d chosen to respond to in this column.

For this last column of 2024, I thought I’d do a little something different and share some of that feedback from readers — good and bad — not just about my answers, but about some of the questions themselves.

A column that prompted one of the biggest responses was my very first, published on July 7 (“Dropping In Just to Say Hi!”), in which a questioner expressed discomfort over a colleague’s habit of initiating conversations on Slack with just a “hello” and no follow-up. My response empathized with the letter writer’s frustrations — I even called the practice of saying “hi” accompanied by silence “creepy.” And a lot of readers had something to say about it, much of it smart.

Said one:

“I have to say that I found it comical that neither the advice seeker nor you thought to simply prompt the ‘hi’-writing colleague to elaborate on the purpose of his greeting, rather than just letting it “languish” with no response. What happened to common civility? If someone says hi, you say hi back! Or you can say, ‘Yes, how can I help you?’ Or ‘Did you have a question?’ Perhaps it’s his way of checking to see if you are busy. And if no response he assumes you’re not available to chat. Or perhaps HE feels put out that everyone else ignores his attempts to connect! He doesn’t want to be annoying and keep pestering people who don’t reply. So he doesn’t follow up. Has anyone tried to just ask? There is no need to be snide.”

Said another:

“Just wanted to note that when you send a message to someone via Teams or Slack it is proper to say ‘hi’ and wait for a response before putting your full request or comment in the message. This is to ensure the receiver is ready to receive the message which may be confidential. If they are sitting with a colleague or in a meeting they may not want to be interrupted or have another colleague see the contents of the message. If there is no reply to ‘hi’ the sender can assume the receiver is busy or not available to receive the message. Just thought I’d pass that along.”