[khold_stare]

The comment about an "email chain could have been a 30-second chit chat" is such a straw-man argument. On top of that, forcing everyone to commute up to an hour each way is a blatant disregard for people's personal time. How productive would the workforce be if the commute counted as work hours?

[juujian]

Hate that. Yes, some issue can be resolver faster by talking in person, but that can be accomplished by a phone call, too. Just like a face to face conversation can end in an hour of gossip. How's that for more efficient?

[ghaff]

Back when a lot of my work conversations were with sales reps and system engineers over the phone, certain reps in particular would take 10 minutes to get to a point where they could have been handled in a minute with an internal email. Though, yes, sometimes the real-time conversation was useful.

[elric]

And of course, the email chain gives everyone time to think on the problem and construct a sensible reply, without interrupting anyone.

As opposed to some manager walking up to your desk while you're neck deep in concentration, only to ask you a retarded question that should have been an email.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

And, not mentioned explicitly anywhere in the discussion, email is a proof of sorts come a dispute time. Chat in the hallway won't be captured in a deposition or at least not as much more than 'he said, she said'.

[ghaff]

Except for the most part, commuting has never counted as work hours except in particular situations like billable hours for some professions.

[yoyohello13]

I unironically think they should be. It will never happen, but one can dream.

[nativeit]

If: (conjunction) in case that; granting or supposing that; on condition that:

[2mlWQbCK]

But work from home has revealed how wrong that was and returning to office is a waste of limited free time that we are not compensated for.

[rdtsc]

> The comment about an "email chain could have been a 30-second chit chat" is such a straw-man argument.

I imagine them hardly holding back laughter when they say it. It's such a bogus straw-man they have to know it makes them look stupid. If in-person communication was such a great boon for the company how much had they invested in the last 3 years in travel budgets for teams, to meet in person? Nothing? Even lowered it? Well, there you go, that explains exactly that's a completely bogus claim.

[John23832]

The solution is as simple as responding on slack/teams/etc in reasonable time during work hours.

[olddustytrail]

I thought it was funny in a "This email could have been a meeting" type way...

[binary_slinger]

> On top of that, forcing everyone to commute up to an hour each way is a blatant disregard for people's personal time.

Commuting is dangerous and stressful. Stressed employees cannot perform their best. It is in a company's best interest to reduce stress and danger.

[russdill]

And now will real time collaboration tools it doesn't even need to be an email chain

[nickff]

Except when the co-worker you need to collaborate with is doing their laundry, gardening, or picking their kid up from school.