[huffmsa]

> After sending an enthusiastic text confirming that they wanted the apartment,

Anyone who sends little yellow men as part of a business conversation deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.

Anyone who conducts a business conversation over any medium but snail mail, fax, email or the phone deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.

I know this is old-fashioned, but business is business, personal is personal.

[ddeokbokki]

> Anyone who conducts a business conversation over any medium but snail mail, fax, email or the phone deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.

That's going against progress, just like some people were against electronic communication for business transactions when they were first introduced.

I understand where you are coming from, texts are familiar, but more and more business run solely on messaging platforms and rely on texts to conduct business.

[huffmsa]

And progress for the sake of progress isn't necessarily a good thing.

I've seen people fire off the first thing that comes to mind in a text message in a business setting and almost always realize they weren't as precise as they wanted to be and have to attempt to correct themselves with follow on messages. This mistake and ensuing retraction almost always sours the deal.

Edit: addendum (I'm aware I'm doing exactly what I just made a case against)

Mine, and the Court's right now, expectation is that written communication does not need to be immediate. And since you have a chance to think through what you'd like to write, your first message has no reason not to be precise and correct to your intentions.

[icebraining]

How is the phone any less immediate that text messages? If anything, it's even more - you don't even need to press "send".

[huffmsa]

A phone conversation is understood to be free flowing. It's easier for us as humans to understand that someone is reasoning out a line of logic in real time over the phone. By contrast, a text is not real time, and should therefore be thought out before sending.

[icebraining]

Fair enough, but that's only a reason to think out those text messages, not to avoid the medium. I occasionally keep drafts on my messaging apps for days, as I mull them over.

[huffmsa]

And if you think them out, then that's fine. But a lot of people think texts are hyper-casual and don't give them appropriate consideration.

[amelius]

> I know this is old-fashioned, but business is business, personal is personal.

People are mixing the personal domain and business all the time. For example: in business meetings, people smile and they tell jokes; also, business people often go out for dinner together.

[huffmsa]

Yes, but we have 50,000 years of evolutionary practice understand what a smile means in real life.

And we recognize that we still don't all interpret those smiles the same way, as is evident in many legal codes not enforcing "handshake" deals, and written agreements almost always supercede oral ones.

[tremon]

Yet somehow, people don't write jokes into their contracts.

[lewisflude]

I know this might sound stupid, but I really find that softening the boundaries/traditional barriers between work/home really helps improve my quality of life.

I like feeling slightly relaxed at work, and I feel like I'm way more productive than in an environment that feels cold, corporate or artificial.

Having said this, I think that it's really important to listen to the cultural signals that arise from your work environment. I wouldn't be lax, or use emoji/gifs in an environment where it didn't feel appropriate.

[huffmsa]

I mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm far and away the heaviest giphy user in my slack groups for internal conversation with teammates I'm comfortable and familiar with.

But any external conversations or conversations where money is on the table, emojis and gifs are too ambiguous.

[lewisflude]

Talking to someone you don't know, it's definitely better to err on the side of simplicity. I wouldn't use gifs/emojis unless I'd had some indication the person I'm talking to would be receptive to it!

[ecmascript]

Aren't you being a bit negative here?

[huffmsa]

Not in the slightest. I am, however, demonstrating that I was raised by lawyers and writers.

As a point of clarification, I'm all for emoji men and gifs in personal communication. I'm probably the biggest giphy user in any given slack group, but only once I feel comfortable with the other channel participants. One of the first things I do is install the cult of the party parrot emoji pack.

But for any communication with outside parties, or where money is on the table, there is no place for emoji, as they're too imprecise.

[Zak]

Certainly, including emoji in say... a contract negotiation could introduce unwanted ambiguity, but that's absolutely not an argument against using text-based messaging platforms for that purpose. Instead, the fact that misunderstandings could be costly is an argument for using precise language for those kinds of discussions regardless of media.