Work emails - How late is too late?

[Bob Impact]

I work at a job where they give you a laptop and are tell you that the hours are flexible. As such most people tend to check emails and so on from home after hours. Now I'm a bit of an insomniac so I occasionally will send out emails really late (I just sent one now). The question is, how late is too late for work emails? Do I look like a maniac sending out emails at midnight?

[led37zep]

I work at a job where they give you a laptop and are told that the hours are flexible. As such most people tend to check emails and so on from home after hours. Now I'm a bit of an insomniac so I occasionally will send out emails really late (I just sent one now). The question is, how late is too late for work emails? Do I look like a maniac sending out emails at midnight?

If you're the boss...yes



if you're an employee...no

[Dude!]

I work at a job where they give you a laptop and are tell you that the hours are flexible. As such most people tend to check emails and so on from home after hours. Now I'm a bit of an insomniac so I occasionally will send out emails really late (I just sent one now). The question is, how late is too late for work emails? Do I look like a maniac sending out emails at midnight?

you look to me like
someone who works late
and takes his job seriously

[instrument]

If you're not on a shift I think its more flexible.

Just make sure the message is coherent no matter the time and no one will question it.

[jauble]

I get reports sent into me at 4 AM. The report is in so screw it.

[Bob Impact]

If you're not on a shift I think its more flexible.

Just make sure the message is coherent no matter the time and no one will question it.
I'm not on a shift per se but I'm generally in office at 7:30AM tomorrow and out by 5:30PM so it's definitely a LOT of work time in a day. I'm not the boss but I am sending emails to my boss as well as teams/people/processes I manage. But yeah, I tend to keep them to simple responses this late... any in depth answers are best left for after I have some coffee in the morning.

[Fez4PrezN2008]

A lot of e-mail clients you can set to send at certain time and date so maybe you should just set a bunch to send at 3-4 am so everyone thinks you're a real go-getter.















Nah, you're a maniac.

[Bob Impact]

I get reports sent into me at 4 AM. The report is in so screw it.

I work with teams all over the world so I do sympathize... the best is when you get meeting requests for 5AM on a weekly basis... some folks don't get timezones I guess.

[biggirl]

If anyone questions your late email, just tell them you couldn't sleep, so you decided to work a little bit.

I send out emails (not work related) to my friends really late/really early, and they make fun of me. I don't care.

[sailor]

you can just schedule the emails to all go out at a certain time.

[Fez4PrezN2008]

you can just schedule the emails to all go out at a certain time.
Is there an echo in here?

[Bob Impact]

Is there an echo in here?

That was the name of the college newspaper I worked on... The Echo. Fun times.

I also preferred to work on that late... maybe I'm in the wrong profession... can I get paid for being a vampire? Cause I may want to give that a shot.

[Bob Impact]

I just got a response from someone in the same timezone as me... maybe I'm not the only maniac out there.

[~Katja~]

I have always worked with international companies, so I paid little attention to the time stamp. When I got in in the morning I still would tend to them in the order they came in.

[STC-Dub]

It is never too late for work e-mails. Some people happen to do their best work/have their best ideas when they cannot sleep. Now, if you are sending a ton of 3 AM e-mails all of the time, that would not be a good thing.

[jauble]

I work with teams all over the world so I do sympathize... the best is when you get meeting requests for 5AM on a weekly basis... some folks don't get timezones I guess.

My guys are an hour behind at most, but if it saves me a fucking phone call send it at any hour.

[Dude!]

My guys are an hour behind at most, but if it saves me a fucking phone call send it at any hour.

I played jumble with your sentence:

"My guys are fucking my behind."

[Bob Impact]

My guys are an hour behind at most, but if it saves me a fucking phone call send it at any hour.

That's my biggest thing when I can get to emails at night... because of where my guys are I tend to get bulks of emails between 9PM and Midnight EST and then again from 6AM to 8AM EST so it helps to answer their questions early so I don't have a backlog of stuff to look at as soon as I hit the office.

[KC2OSO]

I work at a job where they give you a laptop and are tell you that the hours are flexible. As such most people tend to check emails and so on from home after hours. Now I'm a bit of an insomniac so I occasionally will send out emails really late (I just sent one now). The question is, how late is too late for work emails? Do I look like a maniac sending out emails at midnight?
Send emails any time. If you send them after hours people think you are working late. Sleep till noon. You'll be fine.

[jauble]

Well with the exception of translating English to Louisiana I can jump into the box early and be caught up, so I dont deal with anything overnight.

[underdog]

I send work emails at all hours. It also has made my bosses comment about how committed I am to the job. Little do they know that I just can't put the fucking laptop down ever.

[EliSnow]

As long as you don't expect immediate responses, then no, there is not such thing as too late.

[angrymissy]

I work from home 4 days a week and have a dedicated home office. A lot of times I'll catch up on emails from like 10pm-midnight. When there is a lot of little stuff sitting in my inbox, it's easy to catch up late like that when I'm not going to be interrupted. Or, if you see something that you can answer very quickly, why wait until the morning?

[KingModem]

That bullshit "The later I send the emails, everyone will think that I am burning the midnight oil and working well into the AM hours" thing is annoying as fuck.

Everyone knows you are trying to act busier than you are, and no one respects you for not having a life and paying attention to your kids and wife.

Just stop it.

Bosses know to expect emails from people that travel for work late at night, after a long day on the road and after supper. But people who work in the office, ham -n- eggin it 8-5, dont send emails after work hours, everyone sees right through it.

God that irritates me.

[underdog]

That bullshit "The later I send the emails, everyone will think that I am burning the midnight oil and working well into the AM hours" thing is annoying as fuck.

Everyone knows you are trying to act busier than you are, and no one respects you for not having a life and paying attention to your kids and wife.

Just stop it.

Bosses know to expect emails from people that travel for work late at night, after a long day on the road and after supper. But people who work in the office, ham -n- eggin it 8-5, dont send emails after work hours, everyone sees right through it.

God that irritates me.

I just send emails because I'm awake and drunk.

[strawberrypop]

Um, I don't think I ever notice what time an email is sent to me.

Why would it be bad to send things late? It's not like it can wake someone up like a phone call...?

I'm totally confused by the confusion.

[KingModem]

Um, I don't think I ever notice what time an email is sent to me.

Why would it be bad to send things late? It's not like it can wake someone up like a phone call...?

I'm totally confused by the confusion.

From the business traveler prospective, I use my smart phone as an alarm. Emails in the middle of the night from Northwest Airlines, etc, etc tend to annoy.

[underdog]

From the business traveler prospective, I use my smart phone as an alarm. Emails in the middle of the night from Northwest Airlines, etc, etc tend to annoy.

Shut off the email chimes. My phone can go into alarm mode and the only thing that will chime is the alarm.