Chat allows you to read and respond at your own convenience. If you’re not using chat, and someone is hoping for a response faster than email, they’re likely to interrupt you in a way that’s far more disruptive than chat, like walking up in person or calling on the phone.

This is definitely an attitude you need to set within the company culture - chat != instant. At least not initially - once a conversation gets going, it's much faster in chat than via email.

We ask people not to use private chat (with varying degrees of success) but instead ask in channel, even if it's to a specific person:

1. It helps others reading the channel learn

2. If someone else is around and knows the answer, they can provide it

You sometimes have to reply in channel (and copy+paste the question) to get this point across, but it generally seems to work well.

> If you’re not using chat, and someone is hoping for a response faster than email, they’re likely to interrupt you in a way that’s far more disruptive than chat, like walking up in person or calling on the phone.

If they have to physically stand up to bother you, I think that also makes them more likely to answer the question for themselves without bothering you at all.

Some people ... when they have chat, their bar for interrupting you is so low. I have a coworker who it almost seems like he'll interrupt me every time he sees an error message or exception on his screen.

Yeah. There's a very different expectation for people in their 20's, 30's' 40's, 50's with chat. That is, our expectations around email response times is fairly close, but our expectations around chat (jabber, slack,etc) are less aligned.

Personally, I hate all "chat" channels. My attitude is that you can show up in person, or send an SMS...if it's that important. I get that doesn't align with the new global order and all, but it doesn't change my reaction.

Maybe the higher cost of those "more disruptive methods" is a good thing, because it'll filter out those people who couldn't even be bothered walking up to you in person.

My work combines Skype with mandatory archiving to your mailbox.

So you get the worst of both worlds. Intrusive messaging and disjointed and irritating email.

I usually remain logged out of our Corp chat (Sametime) AND keep my phone unplugged. If you want me but can’t be bothered to stop by or send an email, then it’s probably not worth my time.

Didn't even think of that. I still find instant messaging to be disruptive to my own work, but you're right: People would just find me and get up in my business if I couldn't dismiss them with a flick of the wrist.