[throwaway284534]

Ironically, that’s how most email correspondence worked when I lived in Japan. Nearly every message had a paragraph of fluff before getting to the unpleasant details:

Dear Customer,

It seems that the leaves are once again turning to their Fall colors, and the chill of an autumn breeze is once again upon us…

Also we haven’t received your television license fee yet and it would be most appreciated if you could please send us it immediately.

Warmest regards,

-X

[sgtnoodle]

That is a notably pleasant way to be taxed, though. I would appreciate the IRS more if their communications were like that.

[version_five]

Personally I'd rather someone tell me directly what I did wrong and what they want than coat it in fluff, which I consider offensively passive-aggressive. I know that is cultural though, and that in some cultures, e.g Japanese, it may be taken very offensively to just come out and say what you want

[jrockway]

Yeah, they're set phrases that go on letters. I have a book of them, you have to look up the right one for the situation / time of year and add it to your letter. It would be a faux pas not to.

As an American, yeah, just charge my credit card for the fee. Thanks.

[shagie]

That "some cultures" tends to be known as "high context cultures".

https://sites.psu.edu/global/2020/04/18/japan-high-context-c...

> Just like Saudi Arabia and Spain, Japan is also characterized by high-context communication (R. T. Moran; N. R. Abramson; S. V. Moran, 2014, p. 44). Some of Japan’s traditions, values and norms have supported its high context communication. According to Hofstede’s culture dimension, Japan scores 46 on individualism, indicating that they are more likely to show characteristics of a collectivistic society; such as putting harmony of the group above the expression of individual opinions and people have a strong sense of shame for losing face (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). With this, the Japanese have established an in-direct and non-verbal communication within their inner circle rather than the outside circle of the world. Thus, in Japan, communication goes non-verbally, through subtle gestures, facial expression and voice tones. However, this can be a big challenge for foreigners and westerners that do not understand the Japanese language and communication.

https://kosoadojapan.com/high-context-culture-japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...

You even get some difference in the cultural context between men and women, and urban and rural, and north and south within the United States

For an example of a low context culture... Switzerland https://www.worldbusinessculture.com/country-profiles/switze...

> On the whole, the Swiss believe in plain speaking and place directness before diplomacy. It is expected and respected that people will speak their minds, without feeling the need to couch any uncomfortable messages in a softer way in order to spare the feelings of the audience. The type of coded language used by the Japanese or the British can be misconstrued in Switzerland as prevarication or even deviousness. Better to say what you mean and mean what you say.

> As has already been stated, however, this directness of approach should not be confused with confrontation or aggression – it is more the result of a desire to get to the truth or the empirically provable right answer.

[yamtaddle]

There's a nice bit in Forster's A Passage to India in which one of the Indian characters reflects on how ill-mannered another character is for taking a polite excuse (which also happens to be a lie) as a problem to solve and not as the firm "no" that any properly-raised person would understand it to be.

[gcanyon]

100% this. The IRS doesn't provide enough information in their communications, which are already painfully verbose.

[mgkimsal]

I remember getting some tax notification, and attached was some 2 page doc indicating "we've spent a lot of time working on making our documents more understandable, let us know how we're doing"... and... the notice they'd sent me was... more confusing than it needed to be. My accountant didn't quite understand it. I mean, he knew what it was, but hadn't seen the new language, and to top it off, it was months late - indicating I owed money that I'd paid months earlier.

We replied the following Monday, because the notice said we had to reply.

THEN.. 3 months later I got another notice indicating they'd received the first reply, and they needed a bit more time to process.

This was over about $200.

I would love to see them resourced appropriately, but the "let's hire more IRS employees" has been viscously attacked as "87000 more people with guns coming to take all your money!". I've been hearing that propaganda for weeks (months?) now.

[yamtaddle]

> I would love to see them resourced appropriately, but the "let's hire more IRS employees" has been viscously attacked as "87000 more people with guns coming to take all your money!". I've been hearing that propaganda for weeks (months?) now.

Yeah, they've got way fewer people per taxpayer than in the 90s, and I don't think the new hires, the hiring of which will be spread unevenly over a decade, will even bring them back up to that level. Meanwhile the "armed" thing is just transparent bullshit—"here was ONE job posting for the police branch of the IRS (tons of federal agencies have such a branch of armed agents, including many you wouldn't expect), so all these new hires will surely be armed IRS cops coming to bust your door down and take your money!" LOL WUT. But A Certain Set of Terrible News Sources ran with that (knowing it was a lie) so to some chunk of the population, it's true now.

[conception]

Tldr below.

You are both perfectly fine in wanting it both ways. In communicating with people to be effective it’s best to align with their communication style. Some folks want the long explanation, some folks want the tldr. I always try to accommodate both in my work communications.

Tldr: Different people liked to be spoken to differently and that’s fine and useful to accommodate.