At the end of the day, when it's something as trivial as a Teams ping, the onus is on us to confront the anxiety and to work on our reactions. I sympathize with the author and see myself in him but it's not a part of me that would be good to enable.
Perhaps a clearer example would be someone who is afraid of swimming. It's a good idea for them to fight back against people who needlessly mock them for it. They shouldn't feel lesser for their struggles. But if they find themselves in a body of water, the Universe will not care one iota about the life history and mental world that prevented them from learning.
You don’t seem to realize how productive it is for I and my colleagues to ping each other for short real-time communications. Most people can handle this. I respect that you don’t want to, but don’t make general rules that are only about the comfort of a tiny few.
Colleague: "Hey, do you have a minute to get on a call?"
Me: "Maybe. What is it about?"
Colleague: "I was looking at X and had a question."
Me: "I can meet with ..."
Why not cut the chase here and start with "I was looking at X and had a question, do you have a minute?"
I almost never do have a minute without notice but I'm happy to find a few minutes to give people. I don't like having to play this 21-questions game with people to find out what they need, though. It really irks me.
Some people you can say you have a question and it'll occupy their mind not knowing what it is.
Some people can happily just wait until the actual question comes through, but once it does that's the thing they're thinking of.
"Do you have a minute" and "Do you have a minute, I've an issue with X" have problems, but for different people.
I benefit from quick realtime comms too, and understand people are different (that's the main thrust of my comment). I don't know if others realise just how unproductive it can be for some of these styles of messages though.
It's entirely reasonable that my brain is just different to yours.
> It's a sad state affairs when people are so anxious that a simple inquiry can cause them distress.
Yes. I would assume that the person posting this would much rather not get distressed about this kind of thing.
I wouldn't say it causes me distress per se, but a blank "Can you talk" can by default launch my brain down a tree of "why, what if it's X or Y, it's this time and they so...". Being able to do this kind of thing makes me good at my job and worse at some social things, and work I've done to focus on "THIS LINE OF ENQUIRY IS NOT IMPORTANT TO PURSUE, BRAIN" make me better at both. It's still a conscious thing that I think other people don't have to deal with.
I don't see it as a character flaw, a failure of upbringing or controlled by my work (since it's not tied to work). It's just who I am and maybe that is a sad thing to you, I'd rather not have the downsides but I'm not sure I'd trade away a full part of how I think just for a bit of peace.