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To avoid any awkward pauses, it’s better just to explain what you need right off the bat, said Nick Leighton, an etiquette expert and host of the weekly podcast Were You Raised by Wolves?
“Human communication often involves a lot of nuance, much of which is lost in text format,” he said. “When communications are especially brief such as ‘hey,’ there isn’t always enough to go on and it’s easy to come up with a lot of different interpretations, not all of which are good.”
Most of us crave closure and clarity in the workplace, Leighton added, and a lone “hey” feels too open-ended. Some online have noted that hey hanging is more common among baby boomers, and Leighton generally thinks that’s true.
“Attitudes towards hey hanging are somewhat generational, and whether or not this is maddening or innocuous may depend on how old you are,” he said. “But generally, if you’re the sender, it’s best to get it all out there in the first message.”
The only other phrase or word that may inspire as much anxiety as “hey” on Slack or Microsoft Teams is “OK” (or its millennial/Gen Z kid sister, “kk”). As HuffPost’s senior work reporter, Monica Torres, wrote in 2019:
In the mind of an anxious employee, an “OK” or “okay” can become proof of hostility and judgment in text-based communication. When the boss answers a deadline request with just “OK” in an email, the two-letter word can suddenly sound harsh. When a colleague replies to a paragraph-long question with a one-letter “k” on Slack, it can send us into an anxious tailspin, worried the sender is mad at us.
Uneasiness around “hey” and “OK” gets us to an important concept here: When it comes to online chatting, less isn’t always more, according to Mary Crane, the owner of the business consultancy Mary Crane & Associates. That’s especially true when so many of us are remote or hybrid workers and may not know each other very well.
“Slack and Gchat can be hugely effective when participants already know each other well and can communication quickly,” Crane told HuffPost. “Coworkers who have established relationships rarely experience hey-hanging anxiety.”
When coworkers don’t have that familiarity, though, “there’s room for anxiety and a lot of opportunity to misunderstand or be misunderstood, which increases stress and interferes with our productivity,” she said.
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