alt Hacker News> In business communications, I believe it's common courtesy to respond to emails within 24 hours.
Different stroke for different folks, but I'm still very much in the paradigm where email is more like a letter in the mail, not like a text message, IM, or "please return my call" voicemail. [0]
Of course I recognize that email is often used for time-sensitive matters (like scheduling events), but any time I see an email that is likely to require multiple timely backs-and-forths I'll try to move the conversation to a more suitable medium.
[0] Here I'm referring to solicited emails sent by humans or transactional emails triggered directly by a human interaction. In practice our email inboxes also serve as a general "notifications hub" for all sorts of things including recurring events ("remember to pay your bill") and, of course, unsolicited junk.
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Have you routinely received letters or bills from bureaucrats?
I can tell you that those banks, government agencies, and hospitals know how to backdate letters, postmark them like clockwork, and land in my mailbox on a Friday at close of business on a 3-day weekend, just to jam us up and narrow any deadline that may exist.
Even a hand-delivered notice from the landlady shows up at 6:01pm when the office is already closed. I guarantee that you will be helpless to respond in a timely fashion.
It has been suggested that "bankers hours" and 9-5 office hours were originated specifically to jam up the working man, who needed to be in the mines or on the factory floor during those hours. If a bank actually wanted to serve working people, they would be open on weekends. Traditionally it was not something your wife or kids could proxy, if they did not drive or have authorization, but the single working man was doubly screwed in these situations.
This year I also have the experience of very premature "billing notices" sent to my email and text and every other place, where the bureaucrats are counting on impatience to pay a bill far too early, before it is due, luring you in with ambiguous wording. People today are warning "do not comply in advance" and I am observing this maxim with health care billing in particular.
There are only two suitable mediums: E-Mail or phone call.
> Different stroke for different folks, but I'm still very much in the paradigm where email is more like a letter in the mail, not like a text message, IM, or "please return my call" voicemail.
I moved from a company that operated under that paradigm (Slack was the primary mode of internal comms) to one that treats email as the primary mode of comms. It was a minor challenge to start watching my inbox and keep it at zero-unread (something I don't care about at all in my personal emails). Feels natural to me now when I'm in work-mode.