> 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.
> 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.
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.
If a bureaucracy sends out a thing that requires followup/action, and it arrives right before the sidewalks are rolled up, then the citizen is sort of flailing for days. Might even forget to act at 9am on Tuesday. Government websites include a lot of scheduled maintenance. Also, that letter they wrote will be dated at least 10 days before you received it. I carefully staple all correspondence to the envelope with postmarks.
If someone induces me to pay a bill 60-90 days early, that is my loss and their gain. Money in my bank is working for me, available, perhaps earning interest. Money in their bank is sunk. For this reason and others, it can be an error to pay your bills too early.
I recently ordered on Christmas Day from a catalog. They charged my card right away. They still haven't delivered some of the items. Vendors shouldn't be taking your payment until the stuff is shipped. Businesses won't pay invoices until the goods/services are received and verified!
As I said, bureaucracies run like clockwork, and they will always act at the right time and date. It will disadvantage the best of us.
Any office worker knows the difference in character between the email that arrived at 9am on Monday, vs. the memo sent at 11am on Wednesday, or the phone call coming in at 4:59pm on Friday...
I’ve gotten the normal stuff via mail: bills, credit card stuff, DMV, the occasional jury summons. And I’ve also dealt extensively with U.S. immigration, which often requires numerous exchanges via USPS.
And all of these things generally work fine with the assumption that response times will be a couple of days, plus the couple of days in transit.
I can’t say I recall ever encountering mail with a strict deadline very near to when I received it. (Usually the frustration is the opposite: I wish things could move a lot faster than they do.)
Are you trying to say that banks can't be open on the weekends because then bank employees would have to work weekends? Much like any business that operates on the weekends? They would have time off during the week and wouldn't have the issue that people working Mon-Fri have because they could go to the bank on their day off on Tuesday or whatever.
> Are you trying to say that banks can't be open on the weekends because then bank employees would have to work weekends? Much like any business that operates on the weekends?
I'm saying there's a reason not all businesses (or government institutions) work 996[0].
White collars have the luxury of limited hours, resting on the weekends, and being able to take time off work when they have an appointment or obligation.
This is absolutely true. When I worked as at a restaurant, the mantra from management was: "You got time to lean, you got time to clean." I've worked a lot of blue-collar jobs before making my way into office work. Blue collar workers will get chided for pulling out their phone. I'm posting this comment to HN on either side of a call that came in while I was reading the thread.
In my first real office job, I grew anxious when someone from down the hall came and conversed with my office-mate for ten minutes. We had all this work that needed to be addressed! I'm obviously acclimated to office culture now; I'm just trying to underscore the difference in work culture for those who may not have worked in physical labor environments. The people working those jobs aren't even an afterthought to many people (which I can attest from having dealt with people who mistreat workers).
If you try to contact me with a phone call, you might as well send your message into outer space. You'll have better luck getting a response from aliens.
99% of incoming calls to my phone are spam. I won't pick up an unknown number unless someone has already contacted me and told me to be expecting a phone call, or it's a call from someone I already know (people I already know don't call me either).
That is to say, your mileage may vary on what counts as a "suitable medium".
Used to be that people had phones at the desk at work and a voicemail inbox. In a business situation I would expect most people to be reachable by phone.
This reminds me: when people insist on having a real phone call in an email, it could be something that they don't like to put in writing. So it's a good practice to ask what the topic of the phone call will be so that you can join it prepared.
If it indeed is something that you feel might be fishy, I further recommend the following: write a summary of what was discussed and send your summary to the people on the call as "meeting minutes -- 2026-02-11" (make this a habit, and always say "I do this routinely to remember what was agreed"). This can easily avoid you being trapped by dubious propsals or being unwittingly on the wrong side of the law.
I record my phone calls for personal records. Often I won't hear or remember details, so the recording helps.
Are there legal or other situations in which meeting minutes would be admissible in evidence, but a recording would not be? Obviously this is jurisdiction dependent.
if you make a recording, transcribe it, the delete the recording, it's probably hard to prove you made a recording. better yet with todays technology you can probably make a transcription live. i don't know if feeding he audio into a transcription tool counts as recording.
but the example was to use a recording in court. if you do that then everyone knows.
Samsung S24 Ultra with the stock dialer. I use DW Contacts to manage my address books, but stick with the stock dialer specifically for the recording feature. I understand this is CSC dependent.
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.