Q: My co-worker habitually texts me late at night or very early in the morning, which occasionally is about work but never urgent and often purely social. Her texts wake me up, and I have trouble falling back to sleep. As a result, I find myself dragging at the office the next day and frankly these ongoing interruptions—particularly lack of sleep—are impacting my work performance. Any advice before I implode or explode at the office to make her high-tech chaos stop?
A: Without knowing how close your relationship is with your colleague, my sense is she feels she has your permission to text you at all hours of the day—especially if you are responding to her “unwanted” texts.
The simple answer is to apprise your colleague directly by meeting with her—preferably face-to-face perhaps when you are meeting about projects you are working on—and let her know that you try to disconnect from the office once you leave work and that you prefer not to receive texts before or after hours unless it’s an emergency.
Or you might say: “I think our hours are somewhat out of sync as I’ve noticed off-hour texts from you and thought you should know I put snooze notifications after 5 p.m. during the week and on weekends. So, if I don’t respond to you right away, that’s the reason.” Or you can offer your colleague some advice if you think she might be open to it: “Did you know you can schedule your messages to send during work hours?”
If your co-worker continues to keep texting after that, you may need to remind her a couple of more times and encourage her to email messages that are not important or urgent. However, if she still doesn’t get the message, it might be easier to take matters into your own hands and mute your iPhone, set your status to snooze notifications or put your devices away in a separate room. Then you can respond during work hours.
One other thought for managing your colleague or other co-workers in different time zones is to include a message with your e-signature or as an auto reply to messages received outside of office hours. Your message might say something like: “My working hours are from 9 a.m. CST to 5 p.m. CST. I will respond to your message within those hours.”
On another note, please know there are instances when a colleague has good intentions and occasionally texts when they shouldn’t. Show them some empathy as they themselves may have been under a lot of pressure. Regardless of your colleague’s intentions, it is important that you protect your work-life balance by setting boundaries to ensure your own mental and physical well-being. Hope these tips are useful and provide some relief to help you be your best, coherent self at work.
Joan Lee Berkman is a marketing and public relations consultant. if you have a question for Joan, send it to business@townandstyle.com.