[lunarplague]

I've seen these for years, and I've sent it to people who needed it, but as I get older and learn more emotional intelligence, I'm starting to consider the reality is some people just want to build relationships at work because of how terribly difficult it is to make friends as an adult.

Also, depending on your job, you may have to accept that some jobs require you to be malleable to having wrenches thrown into your flow state. It feels like people expect life to always have their boundaries in mind, but none of us are the main character here.

[lupire]

You can be sociable in chat without awkward asynchronous hellos. Just say your sociable message in the first line.

And you can throw a necessary wrench at someone without prefacing it with an unnecessary extra wrench. Bundle the two wrenches together.

[gardenhedge]

Pro tip - continue the casual conversation after the initial question. For a few reasons:

* If you do the social chat and then ask the question it really feels like you're buttering the person up and not being genuine.

* If you do the casual chat after, it allows the person responding more freedom of when to reply. E.g. they know the important work stuff is out of the way and now it can be a slower casual chat.