Emailing at odd hours

[Yvaine]

You might want to start saving up emails in your "drafts" folder and sending them during regular office hours.

This is what I recommend too. This will work even if you don't have the delayed-delivery option.

[SamiHami]

I say email any time you like. I agree with the statement that someone who does not turn off their alerts when sleeping/busy with family/etc is essentially disturbing him- or herself.

[artk2002]

The burden is on the receiver to make sure that they are undisturbed, if that's what they want.  I've never given it a second thought about when I was sending an e-mail, and I say this as someone who could be awakened by a off-hours e-mail, if I didn't take steps to silence my electronics when I don't want to be bothered.  This may have come from the fact that I worked for a multi-national, with colleagues in nearly every time zone on the planet. No matter when I send an e-mail, it's the middle of the night for someone.  If anybody had griped about getting an e-mail in the middle of the night, I would have given them a (virtual) raised eyebrow and not changed a thing. There's no way that I would stay up late, or get up early, or try to customize the delivery for the convenience of every recipient. My colleagues are all adults and supposedly can manage their own lives.

[gollymolly2]

I say email can be sent whenever you like. 

People who have emails set to notify and leave their phones on next to them all night are disturbing themselves.

Or have jobs where that's an expectation.

I'm not suggesting that its never okay to send an email late at night - usually it is. But if you know it'll wake the person up and you have another option, like delay delivery, why not use it?

I disagree. It is up to yourself to set your own 'working' hours, whatever they may be, not whomever may email you at whatever time.

For example, I work for myself. Some times (like January through April) I work ALL THE TIME. I frequently am up at 10pm or 2am working, and emailing people (or receiving emails).

The night's I am not working, I put my phone on vibrate, and don't get woken up. When I wake up during the night (to tend to the baby, or use the restroom), sometimes I check my phone, sometimes not.

You also have the option on most phones to set different email accounts to do different things. So my Gmail account is set to always vibrate, while Work email account is set to make noise, and Client email account is sent to make different noise and vibrate.

So, not rude to email late at night. It's not your responsibility to check with people to make sure it's ok to send an email during 'non work' hours. It's up to the individual to set their own work hours.

Well, without getting too caught in the weeds, it's much easier to set your own working hours when you work for yourself. If you work for others or have a job that requires you to deal with emergencies (or any number of reasons) then you may not get to set your own work hours.

[gollymolly2]

Last post here - I didnt mean to hijack the thread

But it seems to me to be the same situation as someone who works nights, sleeps during the day, but keeps the phone on in case there are any emergency situations with her kids. If a stranger calls and wakes her up, thats not their fault. If someone who knows her but does not know she keeps her phone on for the kids calls and wakes her up, that's not their fault. But if a good friend of hers knows her situation, and calls at noon anyway, that's kind of a jerk move.

Same with mid-night emails. For most people, you can email them at 4am without second thought. And if you email someone at 4am and it wakes them up and you didn't know that would happen, then how could you be responsible? But if you email someone at 4am and you know it will wake them up because they have to have notifications on all night for some reasons, why isn't that also be a jerk move?

[Virg]

gollymolly2 wrote:

"Same with mid-night emails. For most people, you can email them at 4am without second thought. And if you email someone at 4am and it wakes them up and you didn't know that would happen, then how could you be responsible? But if you email someone at 4am and you know it will wake them up because they have to have notifications on all night for some reasons, why isn't that also be a jerk move?"

The problem with this analogy is that smart phones are smarter than old time telephones.  It's not at all difficult to configure a smart phone to do alerts on a very complex level, such as ringing during the night hours only for certain numbers or signaling only for certain email senders.  Unless you're in a position where sometimes you need to wake this person up with email and sometimes not, then it's not hard for him to configure your emails not to give audible notification unless it's during the day.  Given that, I find that it's best to let people manage their own notifications and send the email when I compose it.  If he's configured his phone to notify him for every email he gets and doesn't turn off audibles for your emails at night, then I'd presume he wants to be woken up when you email him.

Virg

[CluelessBride]

But if you email someone at 4am and you know it will wake them up because they have to have notifications on all night for some reasons, why isn't that also be a jerk move?

I mean if you know you will be waking someone up and intentionally send them an email at 4am in order to wake the up all while laughing maniacally - then yes, that would be a jerk move.

But I wouldn't expect someone sending an email to really consider that it might wake someone else up. When you are making a phone call you are looking for immediate contact. Sure, there is the possibility you will end up needing to leave a voicemail, but the original intent of the communication was immediate contact. Which means you need to consider whether or not immediate contact would be convenient. Hence not calling in the middle of the night and avoiding known conflicts/inconvenient times.  In contrast, when you send an email you are looking for contact at the recipient's earliest convenience. Faster than a letter, but not immediate like the phone. So I wouldn't expect someone to think about the email time when sending an email - even if they are sending it to a friend who they know uses an alert. I guess if the friend has complained about it in the past. But even then, if being woken up by your email is an issue - the simplest solution is to spend 2 minutes changing your phones settings.

I've also never heard of someone needing an email alert on during off hours for emergencies. Phone/text capabilities, sure. But even the emergency emails I receive are just providing additional details - I also get a phone call (and sometimes a text too!).

[nuit93]

This has been an informative thread...it never would have occured to me that emailing someone at odd hours could be a problem!

[Hmmmmm]

I work for a global company.  I get emails 24 hours a day and during the weekends.  It is up to me to manage my phone notifications. I wouldn't expect the person in our Shanghai office to try and figure out if sending me an email would wake me up.

[Ceallach]

I work for a global company.  I get emails 24 hours a day and during the weekends.  It is up to me to manage my phone notifications. I wouldn't expect the person in our Shanghai office to try and figure out if sending me an email would wake me up.

That's an excellent point!   My previous two employers were global, which meant I was continually emailing people in the "middle of the night" their time.    But because that was the norm it never seemed an issue - kind of went without saying that they would work during their working hours, and us during ours.

My current employer is a privately owned, local company, only 100 employees.  I am the 2nd most senior person in the organisation (reporting to the CEO).

A couple of posters suggested that my boss and other managers turn off the push function on the weekend unbeknown to me, however I've fairly certain this isn't the case - they respond fairly promptly!     I guess that's the crux of it.   I *know* that they're getting my emails even outside of business hours, because they respond, so therefore is it rude of me to send them at really inappropriate times e.g. 3am etc.    Yes, if it woke them up, they'd probably blame themselves for not switching their phone off - but I suspect that I'd also get a "What were you doing sending emails at 3am?!" question from them the next day! 

[TootsNYC]

Their problem.

The thing I like about email is just as you said. One sends and reads on one's own time. Alerts can be turned off.

Yeah, I guess it just irritates me a little bit because I feel guilty for disturbing them when I didn't actually want them to read it - I wish my outlook had a "time delay" option, that way I could queue up a pile of emails to send at a specific date/time!         

But maybe they *wanted* to read it. Maybe it makes them feel less overwhelmed in the morning, or they like the feeling of control/being plugged in.

And yeah, I wish for a "time delay" option as well. My first-ever email program had that--I do NOT understand why it isn't an option!

[MrTango]

Not rude at all.  If they don't want their phones to go off late at night, they can silence the ring-tone.

[Jovismom]

Not rude at all.  If they don't want their phones to go off late at night, they can silence the ring-tone.

Exactly, that's what I do.  I have different notification tones for emails, texts and phone messages.  My cell phone sits on my bedside table but, I turn it to silent every night when I turn in. 

If someone chooses to have audible notifications on their phone the onus is on that person to manage their notifications.

[Ceallach]

Their problem.

The thing I like about email is just as you said. One sends and reads on one's own time. Alerts can be turned off.

Yeah, I guess it just irritates me a little bit because I feel guilty for disturbing them when I didn't actually want them to read it - I wish my outlook had a "time delay" option, that way I could queue up a pile of emails to send at a specific date/time!         

But maybe they *wanted* to read it. Maybe it makes them feel less overwhelmed in the morning, or they like the feeling of control/being plugged in.

And yeah, I wish for a "time delay" option as well. My first-ever email program had that--I do NOT understand why it isn't an option!

That's true, because if I see an email then *I* want to read it - otherwise it will weigh on my mind wondering what's sitting there waiting for me. I can't resist the urge in fact!    So I definitely get that.   But if I'm not alerted to the presence of the email then I don't want to read it and my weekend isn't disrupted.  So if the email weren't sent until business hours I wouldn't have the desire to read it.... IYKWIM.    I don't have a need to read emails on the weekends as having some down-time is really important.  But if I know they're there, I'll read them.

(One thing that does happen a lot that amuses me is when we all email each other from bed - that's fairly common in the early morning including today actually, whoever is first awake and getting started on work for the day flicks something off, and we're all lying in bed replying from our phones!    Hey, there are worse ways to work!  I actually quite enjoy that type of exchange). 

[blarg314]

Whether you want to let people know you work after hours is a separate issue.

As long as you aren't expecting responses in the middle of the night, when you send emails is up to you. And how people handle emails is up to them. If they have a phone that recieves emails, they should be able to set different tones, and if they are in a situation where they want to be woken up for certain emails and not others, there are ways to program that.

I find it hard to believe that they don't normally get emails at night, though, and that your email is a specific problem.   I don't get huge amounts of email in general, but I always wake up to a list of them in both my personal and work emails. When I'm corresponding with people or businesses in different time zones, we almost always send asynchronously.