[joseph8th]

At risk of repeating what everyone else has said... My PM does the "Hey" thing. I do not multitask. I'm a serial tasker.

So I turned off all notifications on Slack. The only way I know I have a message is the red dot that appears in the panel icon.

Now, it's async again. When I even glance up to see if there are new messages... Red dot or no red dot

[chockchocschoir]

Another non-confrontational way of dealing with this issue is to engage the first time they do it, and when the conversation is about to end, tell them "hey by the way, in the future I'd appreciate it if instead of saying "hey" and waiting for me to reply, you'd just write me the question in one go, as that would be less distraction for me. Thank you, hope you understand" or something similar.

This way there won't be any misunderstandings about why some people seem more responsive than others, because now that person knows how to communicate with you.

[Cthulhu_]

If they only say "Hey" with no follow-up, I'll just assume it was nothing and they got distracted. In smaller environments it could work to link them to e.g. https://nohello.net/en/ and / or educate them though.

But turning off notifications works; it keeps your focus, and making them wait for a reply trains and reminds them that it's asynchronous communication. A lot of people have grown accustomed to fast replies though.

[fleddr]

Your assumption may be wrong though. Especially if you work internationally, the greeting ritual may be a form of civil courtesy.

I do hate it though. Just ask the damn question, don't wait for me to say "hey" back.

[chousuke]

I wish we could just get rid of that particular form of "courtesy".

I can't help but be annoyed or distracted by naked hellos, regardless of the intent behind them, so to me, they are rude. I understand that they might be some sort of social ritual, but I can't for the life of me understand how it's in any way courteous to ask for someone's attention with an expectation of a synchronous reply before revealing anything about why they want your attention.

But I suppose the majority feels the opposite for some unfathomable reason.

[fleddr]

It's a misuse of tools indeed. It's something to do on the phone, not in a (supposedly) asynchronous communication tool. But hey, some people even use email synchronously.

I tried to punish the naked hello senders, by simply not responding at all. If you can't be bothered to tell me why you need me, I can't be bothered to respond.

Unfortunately, empathy broke it. I work with a lot of remote workers in India. They make long hours and I know they need something from me, I just don't know what. By intentionally not responding, I feel bad about effectively sabotaging progress.

[benhurmarcel]

I'd love if chat apps had the option to notify you only once per contact in the span of a a minute. Bonus point for delaying the notification by 10s after the last message, in case another one is following.

A colleague just sent me a single question in 11 messages (and yes the first one was "hello"). People use the enter key as punctuation, which shouldn't be a problem and is fixable by software. But as of now it spams notifications.

[BeefWellington]

The only way "Hey" is acceptable is if there's an immediate followup with whatever it is the person is asking for.