I'll take it slow today | Hacker News Reader

I'll take it slow today

markozivanovic.com

This article has a lot of "trend" and "have you noticed" and "people are doing X" and "this is a thing" statements. I'm not looking for hard data in a blog entry but this smells a lot like someone extrapolating from a few interactions to create a buzz article.

But I'll take the bait: I have noticed no such trend.

People did that before pandemic, they do it now. Some of them are performatively demonstrating that they are important, and therefore busy, and therefore tired. Some of them appear to have medical issues. Some of them have a cold but find lying in bed boring. Some of them are indirect-bragging about their heroic alcohol intake.

I haven’t seen this. I see people responding when sick and I usually tell them to wait or give me some of their tasks so they can rest without worrying. I don’t care if someone is under the weather. They can reply or not, and if I see that they are sick or low battery, it’s just a reminder to give a little grace.

There's little consideration for the times where this isn't some sort of voluntary choice. "If you’re not feeling well enough to work, don’t." is fine and well if you've got unlimited sick days, never get sick, or don't have any sort of disability.

I have a cold right now. I would prefer to be off work recovering today but I work on a contract basis; if I take time off work I don’t get paid.

The author is in Germany, so the situation in other places may be surprising to them.

My angle was more about the ambiguity of the status/using the phrase, but I can see how it may appear insensitive to others. It definitely wasn't my intention.

This seems to me like a lack of people skills on both sides of the conversation.

Not feeling great today? Keep it to yourself or at most tell people who depend on you for something critical today. Avoid all work that isn't urgent and important. Communicate as necessary and expected.

Other person not feeling great today? Don't ask them to do anything that's not urgent and important. Feel free to ping them via message on random stuff, they're not doing work-work anyway.

Any of that feel like too much? Person fucked up, they should have taken sick leave instead.

Here’s my secret: my every day is a slow day. If they don’t accept my slowness, they don’t deserve my quickness.

Interesting that almost every take is about various ways how other people will react to this.

I assume that the text is as AI-generated as the picture is.

Hey. Author here. It's not, that's where I draw the line! :)

People still have/use status messages? I haven't seen a status message in almost decades now probably, and definitely not in a work context.

Signaling you are sick and working via a status message just seems like an odd choice. The pessimist in me looks at this as signaling for sympathy.

The only status I've seen people use is linking to that no hello site.

It isn't my responsibility to adapt to your slow day. Keep it to yourself, be a professional. This "trend" seems little more than just immaturity.

Do people really say "I'm deliberately working slow today"? It sounds unprofessional. Just work at the pace you feel comfortable, commit to deadlines accordingly, and block your calendar if you aren't at your desk or are working heads-down on something.

Sometimes I work slow, sometimes I work fast but either way it isn't other people's business to know. I always hit my deadlines, and if I can't I meet a deadline I communicate it as early as possible.

If I only worked on days where I felt "fully recovered", I wouldn't do that much work at all. This article feels kind of tone deaf.

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