THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
Please Stop Sending Me ‘I Hope You’re Well’ Emails — I’m Not
Most of us aren’t. Here are some 2020-appropriate alternative greetings.
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Is anybody well in 2020? I doubt it.
I know I’m not, and my colleagues inside and outside of my company probably aren’t either. For example, for everyone living on the West Coast, outside looks like Mars. Meanwhile, inside, there’s the usual news about Covid-19, more Black people being shot by the police, and the volatile protests in response — it’s a constant loop of depression. Everything is raggedy, and I’m only using that word because it makes me laugh. I need all the laughs I can get these days.
So why do we insist on fixing our fingers to type “I hope you’re well” when we reach out to colleagues? I’ve asked myself this question since March. “I hope you’re well” is not the best we can do in the end times. Or is it?
The answer is no. It’s a hollow nicety we write because we don’t want the person receiving the email to think we’re rude — it’s like saying “please” before we ask a person for money they owe us.
