What do u think of emails that start with “I hope u are well in these difficult times”?
Vartika Jaiswal
12 replies
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Hugo Santana 'Kaloh'@hugo_santana
The Modern Pilot
I think it is a polite way to start a conversation during these times, specially if you are not too close to that person.
I also think the geographic area the person lives in is important. I would use the line if the area is highly affected by COVID.
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@hugo_santana Yes definately. I like to start emails with something similar i.e. "I hope you're having a great day", "Hopefully, everything's great in your world", et cetera.
@hugo_santana I can definitely see that
I'm not personally bothered by it. Generally there was a certain etiquette many moons ago where a greeting where a salutation would usually be followed by a sort of "How are you?".
After all, that's why old letters started and ended with:
"Dear [name]/[salutation]
...
Yours Faithfully/Sincerely"
Fast forward to the email era and it became
"Hi,
Hope you're well
.....
Warm/Best Regards"
And when we moved to messaging, there is no greeting or even pause. You just get to it.
"Hey, did you buy the remote?"
So having lived and worked through a few of these "messaging" generation, none of them bother me. Because you can filter the guff to find the salient points.
However, I am aware that a lot of folk really HATE "I hope you're well" but the problem is, whether the intent is authentic or not, the rest of the message may well be inauthentic, regardless. Just because someone _doesn't_ put "I hope you are well" doesn't mean they wish me harm or even wish me well, but the fact they write to me at all, means they *definitely* want something. Whether they ask about my health or not, doesn't change that.
So being frank, I view the criticism of it going around at the moment as a storm in a teacup. I personally like it if folk cut to the chase, because I do, but it varies whether people would be receptive to, or relate, to that and I don't think less of anyone who asks how I am keeping.
@ethar_alali You are absolutely correct Ethar.
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"Hope you're well' doesn't sound disturbing. However, I wouldn't want "the difficult times" part to be added in every letter I receive. Perhaps, I'm just being emotional but telling me now and then about challenges doesn't make them disappear. It rather gets me more and more depressed.
In return I try to avoid this exact phrasing in my communications. Who knows, perhaps a person I'm reaching to doesn't have a difficult time at all. It's all about personal perception, after all.
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@vartikaa_jaiswal sure, no problem. I use guess pretty conservative set: emails, messengers in social media (linkedin, facebook, twitter), imessage, Telegram, What's up, Wechat (I communicate quite a while with South East Asia and they prefer Wechat due to the China influence, I presume). What else... Guess, that's mostly it. Though, once in a while I use some other means that are imposed by circumstances (like, while communicating with workforce in Fiverr). Well, I send emails to customers using Sendgrid, but I never ever begin them with "Hope you're well in these difficult times"
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