Nothing flips my emotional switch faster than someone opening a serious, heartfelt message I’ve spent time and emotional energy crafting… with “Good morning, Jeanicia. Hope you're having an excellent Wednesday 😊.”
An excellent Wednesday?
Sir. My message literally said: "Today is my mom’s birthday. She would’ve been 69. I’m grieving. I’m trying to make sense of things. I’m asking you to share a part of my origin story I’ve never been told."
And you’re over here acting like we’re exchanging pleasantries in a work email about Q3 projections.
“Hope you’re having an excellent Wednesday 😊”???
No, I am not. No genius, I’m not doing excellent today. I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed. I’m frustrated that I even have to ask for this. And now I’m mad, too—because instead of meeting me where I am emotionally, you’ve pulled out the Hallmark-template-autoresponder and dropped it into the top of your message like a dry crouton on an emotional soup.
And listen—I'm not unreasonable. I know some people were raised on formulaic communication and trained to start every written exchange like it’s a letter from the Queen. But can we not? Can we please read the room—or in this case, the message?
Salutations in emotionally charged conversations feel like someone handing you a mint when you’re talking about your mom’s funeral. It’s not offensive in isolation, but it completely misses the point. And the little smiley face? 🙃 That’s not cheer—that’s warfare.
It feels so dismissive. Like I poured out something vulnerable, raw, and deeply personal, and you breezed in with your auto-pilot “Good morning” like we’re strangers in line at Walgreens.
I don’t need your Wednesday wishes. I don’t need the weather report. I don’t even need you to be poetic. I just need you to see me. To engage with what I said. To respond to the content instead of skating past it like it's a flyer for a lost cat on a utility pole.
It’s not just him either. It’s anyone who replies to an emotional email or message with a robotic greeting and zero acknowledgment of tone or context. It feels like emotional small talk when what I asked for was connection.
And let me just say this: I’m already doing the work of reaching out to family, trying to gather pieces of memory, legacy, truth. That takes effort. It’s not easy. So when someone replies with a half-hearted “Hope all is well,” it makes me want to scream into a decorative throw pillow.
Sometimes I wish we could just start messages like:
— “Whew, this is heavy. Let me take a breath and reply.”
— “Thanks for trusting me with this.”
— “I hear you. Let me see what I can remember.”
Something. Anything. That shows you’re responding to the moment and not just copy-pasting from the back of a greeting card.
So no, I’m not having a good Wednesday. I’m grieving. I’m irritated. I’m tired of emotionally tone-deaf replies. And I swear, if one more person opens a serious conversation with “Hey hey!!” or “Hope this note finds you well 😊,” I’m gonna start mailing back edited versions of their messages—with big red arrows that say: “Try again. This ain’t it.”
Sincerely,
Not In The Mood for Small Talk
And definitely not having an excellent Wednesday. 🫐
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