I hate

and while i'm moaning the gradual increase in numbers of ted talks / moth radio hour / radiolab type programmes with the annoying american presenters and their identical plummy overly happy accents. could we at least get a bit of diversity some southern drawl, some minnesotan, the odd texan.

So much of that regionalism was wiped out in the 90s. I saw from inside the radio side of things where jobs became less stable. People needed the versatility to move from format to format as stations changed owners from local owners to corporate. Same held true for local TV stations too. Neutral accents allowed you to DJ country or rock stations, you also move from doing the TV weather in Tempe to doing weather in Atlanta to move to a major market. A huuuge Fuck You goes out to Clear Channel for that change. Corporate vampire fuckers the lot of them.

There has always been a New England plummy bias to broadcasting anyway. But the real regionalism died in the 90s.

/csb

ah so it's a north east type accent. i didn't want to pigeon hole the accent or get it wrong but had a vague thought it might be from up there. a nice neutral accent that neither offends or excites.

Lots of people have a polite version of "just fucking ask" in their Ms Statuses and we have had emails about it.

I occasionally use statuses when my VM is shitting itself to let people know I may not respond for a while. But I find the perms-status really grating.

It's not that different from the usual Home Counties thing here. It's genteel metropolitan New England English spoken by people who went to good small town universities (think Amherst, Mt Holyoke, Bowdoin, Dartmouth).

American accents change gradually over long distances. More of a spectrum rather than the UK's tightly spaced scatter plot of regionality.

I simply don't respond until they tell me what they want. Large proportion of messagers never bother sending a followup.

interviewers who seem to think they know more that the expert they've asked to come on to the programme to interview and talk about the subject of their expertise.

shut up and let them talk you colossal dingbats

Isn't this because most businesses don't have phone systems now (or that awful computer based one that no-one uses) so people use teams/slack as an alternative to the phone and that initial 'hi' is really to be understood as 'are you online now and able to help me out quickly' - the person can't be arsed typing their full question because they want to know first whether or not you're there and able to help.

That seems like a reasonable explanation. In my defence, I have a status message which is shown in chat which links nohello & tells people to go to our team's support channel rather than messaging me directly.

Sort of. But the problem highlighted above are the people that say "Hi", you reply with "hey, how's it going?" and then you sit there waiting for something more from them that never comes. You don't expect them to go silent on you so you sit waiting for a bit - firing off a quick response and immediately context switching back to what you were doing before is quite difficult.

Many "modern" (e.g. IT/Media/etc) work places don't use email or phones for internal comms. Pretty much all of my internal comms is done via:

• Slack
  
• Video calls
  
• Editing Google docs/sheets/slides
  
  

Email is only really used for sending occasional company/division wide announcements (think one per week max) or for sending things that require audit trails (e.g. mostly stuff to HR like changing pension contributions, etc).

In 2.5 years I don't think I've ever made a single phone call to someone else in the company, or received one. Any 1:1 communication like that is done over a video call that is agreed upon and setup prior to happening - even if it's just "Here's a meeting link, let's jump on it" - there's no concept of a cold calling a video call here.

Looking back in my Sent email folder I can see an email to my manager a couple of weeks ago (for something where an audit trail will be useful) and then previous email I sent was to payroll in November 2023 asking for a copy of my P11D.

Going back to Slack, most of the time my Slack's to individuals are like:

(not urgent) Just wondering if you worked on the FooBar system in the last week. Having some problems with it \<error message\>, I've tried searching for that and saw that you dealt with something similar before \<LINK\> but there's no summary of what the root-cause was. If you've got 5 minutes I wouldn't mind talking to you about it. No problem if busy right now but I'd like to get this looked at by the end of my day (which is at 1600 UTC)

That means they can glance at the notification, see (not urgent) and know they can go back to what they're doing if it's more important to them. When they do read it there's enough info for them to have an idea of what it is, they can see what I've done to try and fix it myself, and there's a clear expectation of what is required with rough timescales.

Any 1:1 communication like that is done over a video call that is agreed upon and setup prior to happening

The dream. I have a potential client who has created this situation where they might just call at any moment, and they clearly expect me to answer. If I'm nicely tucked into a task, I am not picking up. Book a fucking appointment. Not that I have told them to do this.

(not urgent) Just wondering if you could fix that really long inline code tag. Having some problems with layout on my client. No problem if busy right now but I'd like to get this looked at by the end of my day (which is at 1700 UTC)

The fact that when checking out at a self-service till, the only options for a receipt are Yes or No; not Yes Please and No Thank You.

I realise that's a bit niche.

:green_check_mark:

3) don’t know

Email is only really used for sending occasional company/division wide announcements (think one per week max) or for sending things that require audit trails (e.g. mostly stuff to HR like changing pension contributions, etc).

Which really pisses me off. If someone needs my input on something sometime in the next few days then send me an email. A chat message interrupts what I'm doing, an email I can get to when I have break in another task.

Motorists who don't disable the horn to sound whenever locking their stupid car.

I wish Zipcar would do this (with the MG cars specifically).

When you're done with your Zipcar you lock the car with the app having left the key plugged into something in the glove compartment. So as soon as you close the doors with the keys still inside the car it sounds a few short pips on the horn to warn you of that. Even at 2am in a residential area (as most Zipcars are).

sounds a few short pips on the horn to warn you of that.

They legally have to do it for blind drivers.

Mine beeps it annoys me.

I also have massive anxiety about not locking it however and will walk back twice sometimes to Anna’s car which doesn’t beep to make sure.

So apologies I know it’s annoying but it helps.

sounds a few short pips on the horn to warn you of that.

They legally have to do it for blind drivers.

Don't the ultrasonic security sensors in the car disrupt the echo location blind drivers use to find the glove compartment?

Does the sound of the central locking and the hazards flashing not suffice?

That's just a covid 5g conspiracy theory.

To be clear, this isn't locking the car, it's a few beeps the car makes when you get out of the car and shut the door but the keys are still inside the cabin. Can't see what that has to do with blind people.

(Note that this particular car has a keyless ignition. The keys just have to be inside the cabin and then you press the Engine Start/Stop button.)