You email someone with a question. They respond with an appropriate answer. Do you email them back to say thank you?
Here’s the way I see the issue:
If it’s a long time friend, then no. The extra email is just a waste of time. And often it gets my hope up when someone I like sends me an email and it’s only to say “thank you.”
If it’s someone who I don’t really talk to very often, then I’ll send the email to show my appreciation.
The really tricky situations arise at work. Sometimes you have to email someone you don’t really know for mundane administrative stuff. Do you say “thank you” in response to an email telling you that the meeting on X will take place on Tuesday at 2:15? Even if you know that the person you are emailing is very busy and it’s basically his job to answer such questions?
What about your boss? Does he get a “thank you” email even though you know he gets hundreds of emails a day?
I always think it’s a good idea to acknowledge any e-mail dispensing information with a short one-line “Thank you” or “Got it”, so that people know for sure you have read the e-mail. Especially in a work situation.
I send out email confirmations that I’ve completed [x mudane task] and occasionally get “thank you” responses. (One person sends this: “ty” and that’s it. Their signature must be 10 or 15 lines!) Personally I don’t care one way or the other, but I will say that my boss’s boss gets the same type of thank-you emails a lot and I happen to know for a fact that she … hates them is perhaps too strong, but she sees them as a small but nonzero waste of her time.
So I would venture that for an admin who’s letting you know about a meeting, skip the “thank you” response. They don’t, quite frankly, give a shit if you make your meeting or not, so they don’t wait around for a confirmation from you to assure themselves that you got your notice. They send the notice and then get on with the next of hundreds of emailed requests.
Bosses are … a more YMMV situation, I would say. In my case, as I described above, I’d skip it. Some other bosses might appreciate the courtesy.
I for one would be irritated if it were get thank you replies to answers to trivial queries - because I’d waste time processing the ‘Re: …’ mail to make sure it really is just a thank you note.
My usual practice:
unsolicited information: I answer only when the case differs from ‘Received and fully understood, will act as indicated.’
information asked for: send thanks only if the other party has gone to some trouble to get the answer, send further query if the answer needs clarification or opens a new question, walk over or send conciliatory mail if the response indicates I have brushed the recipient against the grain.
I always send a thank you, or some kind of acknowledgement, even if it’s just an “OK”. It’s confirmation to the sender that I received the information. Plus, it’s polite, and it might be the only “nice” e-mail that person gets all day.
I try to. It may be a pain but it something that people need to hear. Especially the boss because you want that next raise and he won’t forget your courtesy. Not being a butt kisser just being courteous is a good quality.
If you are up to your eyeballs in work and can’t do it at a later date. Thanks for the “heads up” or something like that.
I usually send a thanks for both thanks and acknowledgement (“Yup, got it/read it/responded to it.”). I don’t think it is ever a bad idea to thank someone for information or doing something for you (and I do appreciate it when someone acknowledges that I did something for them or gave them information - or jus that they got the email).
I don’t see a lot of thanking posts here, and yet most people seem to agree that thanking is necessary in email. What’s different about this place?
In my personal life, if I need to acknowledge something, I add something more than just a thank you. If someone does something out of the ordinary, I thank them. If it’s just normal day to day stuff, I save the thank you for later, perhaps even in person. And if there’s an actual correspondence, I may thank ahead of time.
I’ve not yet been in a work situation where emails were frequent enough for special consideration.
At work, the people I ask questions of might get a few dozen emails a day, rather than hundreds. And they generally appreciate some acknowledgment that I received their reply, not to mention a thanks for having taken the trouble to dig out whatever info they sent me. It only takes a second, as the recipient of such an email (I’m equally often on either end of this sort of exchange), to click on the email to open it, see the “Thanks!” line, and close it again. I can deal with a few of those each day.
Sounds like you guys need to get an office email system with a calendaring function built in. That way the person adds you to the list of invitees to a meeting, the invite pops up in your inbox (showing time, place, duration, others attending, and any documents attached to the original invitation), and you click “Accept” or “Decline” or assorted other options, which of course clears up whether you received the meeting info.
Since you don’t have that, I’d say just ask the person, if it’s someone you actually see in person once in awhile, whether they prefer an acknowledgment or not.
I do that here, too. If someone has taken the time to post something in response to me or my question, I try to acknowledge them. If they’re provoking a fight, I may not.
I say thank you all the time. Here, too. And it irritates me when people don’t, or worse yet, thank some people and not others, or respond to only a select few and ignore everyone else. There is one specific poster on this board whom I will never respond to, for not only do they not thank people, they also whine about how none of the responses could possibly work for their SPECIAL situation.
Another vote for “always”. It takes what, 5 seconds? And 2 seconds for the person to read. If someone does something for me, I thank them - simple as that. I don’t see that it would be different in a work versus personal context. Even if someone works for me and therefore didn’t really have a choice but to do as asked, I would thank them. A little gratitude and courtesy never hurts.
