Gen Z struggles with ‘email anxiety’ at work

“[On my way] to my office job to answer emails with the anxiety levels of someone being hunted for sport,” a young 9-to-5er penned in the closed-caption of her TikTok clip as she sucked down an applesauce before clocking into work.

“Email anxiety is so real,” gripped a separate staffer in another viral video. “The hardest part of my job is writing emails…It will take me 30 minutes to draft and send a three-sentence email.”

“I can’t live like this,” she groaned.

Similar sentiments were echoed by equally shaken laborers online.

Unsurprisingly, emails are far from the only workplace inconvenience that grinds Gen Zs’ gears.

In addition to canceling the use of the thumbs-up emoji due to its “hostile” connotations, whippersnappers at work have also banned the peach cartoon icon, citing its inappropriate undertones.

The demographic doesn’t want to be stuck behind a desk on a traditional eight-hour workday schedule, either.

“It is not something I am willing to do,” barked an unflinching Gen Z, who said he’d only commit to accepting jobs that offer 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. shifts.

But, when it comes to email anxiety, Touma warns that the stress can cause burnout in corporate fledglings.

“Unlike older generations who may have developed strategies for compartmentalizing work and personal communication, Gen Z may struggle to establish boundaries,” he said.

The experts suggest that more seasoned pros have had more time to strike a healthy work-life balance around handling emails, whereas big business newbies aren’t yet as savvy.

An expectation to respond quickly to emails and other messages “can blur the boundaries between work and personal life,” he said. “This constant connectivity can contribute to heightened stress levels and feelings of being constantly tethered to work obligations.”

But there’s hope yet for professional pups, according to Touma.

He recommends Gen Zs try responding to urgent messages within an hour or two. For messages that aren’t time-sensitive, answering within 24 hours is “considered courteous and professional,” he advised.

Touma also suggests setting up filters to automatically sort emails by urgency and topic, as well as designating specific times to check and respond to emails throughout the day.

Finally, he urges folks to unsubscribe from any irrelevant email lists and newsletters.

[quote]who said he’d only commit to accepting jobs that offer 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. shifts.

We call those paaaaart tiiiiime joooobs.

Oh, no. Poor things.

They're so vocal on TikTok. How can they possibly be shy via email?

OP is just looking to attack Gen Z

These threads are so weird to me. It was primarily elderly voters who support Prop 8 and all those antigay ballot initiatives. It's mostly people over 50 who voted for Trump. But DL is convinced that anyone under 30 is evil and worthy of derision

R4 completely ignored the entire story.

[quote]“Email anxiety is so real,” gripped a separate staffer in another viral video.

Oh dear.

R5, but what about those of us around 40 making valid criticisms? I guess to them, we're "Boomers" now?

R5, I don't remember people making all of these excuses for us when we were entering the workforce.

We were told to put on our big boy/big girl pants and suck it up. And we did.

They need a safe space to escape from good grammar. Because of course they do.

They have no anxiety about SMASH and GRABS though!

Wow that’s a terrible piece of journalism.

[quote] For millennials and older, the “You Got Mail” notification rarely incited stress.

What notification? This doesn’t exist lol.

R8 what valid criticisms are you talking about? This story isn’t based on any sort of reality, it’s mostly anecdotal and the “study” it cites doesn’t give any specific info. I wouldn’t be surprised that younger people would be less likely to read every spam email that comes their way because they’re generally more fluent with how to use the internet in its current form, so it makes sense that they would have more unopened emails.

And again, it’s unsurprising to me that a person with less experience in a position would stress more about the quality of their communications…..because they’re less experienced.

This gen x v millennial v gen z stuff is sooooooooo boring and unproductive.

[quote] [R8] what valid criticisms are you talking about?

That the youngest workers today are lazy, addicted to their cell phones, unreliable, lack appropriate workplace communication skills, and overall, S-U-C-K!

Oh, and despite being "digital natives," they couldn't work out a simple tech problem if their life depended upon it.

Emails have always been a pain.

It's because they can't spell or write.

R14 my younger coworkers are great. What now?

R17, let's exchange co-workers!

They should be experts at this.

R13 correct. The social media contagion is spreading. Emails are tedious too. People are obsessed with a paper trail for the most mundane shit, it has to do a lot with women in the workplace, they’re always desperate to point fingers and play the GOTCHA! game rather than just getting shit done. Work is now a place to walk on eggshells and play mind games rather than being productive.

Well, no different than a Boomer boss I once had. She went out of town for a week, had over 1,000 e-mails when she returned. When I asked her how she dealt with that she said she did a mass deletion of all of them without reading them. Fallowed that up with "I was out of town, email went down, if you sent me an e-mail that was very important, please resend a new one. - The management.

Soooo Typical all about me, me, me Boomerish behavior. Unlike Gen Z, no remorse, guilt or anxiety involved.

Gen Z are being treated like little newborns by a wet nurse.

How hilarious from a generation who demands to be taken seriously and wonders why they don't have homes yet.

R21 she sounds horrible, but most Boomers are hard workers. Gen Z just doesn’t respond. They’re pieces of shit. No wonder AI is being pushed so hard.

Female employees are too busy keeping tabs on everything said in the office, desperately searching for a triggering and offensive statement, to try and start HR drama and get a lawsuit going than to focus on actual work.

Quelle surprise that the Venn diagram of those complaining about young people and complaining about women in the workplace (Jesus Christ what is wrong with this website) is a circle.

Gen Z support for gay marriage dropped significantly following the Millennials.

Fuck these little cunts.

I can deal with email and texts. No. Phone. Calls.

R27 has stated her boundaries

When I was self-employed, I learned to like emails because I could bill for dealing with them.

Now, I work in a ~ 50-person office within a larger organization (maybe 1,500 ppl). Some intra- or inter-office emails are somewhat anxiety-inducing. Especially the ones from dumb, bossy people.

Anyway, I am ruthless with my emails and delete a ton of them. It's like Whack-a-Mole.

I don't mind phone calls. After going back and forth with emails, sometimes it's just helpful to have a phone call.

Deleting emails is going to bring law suits.

Who the fuck gets 1,000 emails in a week?

Be better, millennials!!

R30, I receive some truly dumb intra office emails, like Happy Fri-Yay from the frau crowd. Usually the subject is something like: fridge clean out or chipping in for May birthdays celebration.

It's hilarious watching these Gen Z idiots try to make an enemy of Millennials, whom already have had no problems fighting with Boomers or Gen X.

Come at us again, sweetie.

Gen Z email after 30 minutes:

Wut DY need again? DY need it RN?

I agree R33. I get the same stupid emails.

When we worked from home, no one bothered with emails or phone calls. Everyone just figured everything out. Now that we're back in the office, I get at least 10 ridiculous, stupid, unnecessary emails a day.

FFS, 1000 emails untouched?

Prioritize.

Learn which of your key colleagues uses email for everything and messaging for nothing. (They have different expectations)

Anything from HR, anything remotely administrative rather than related to day-to-day work can usually be ignored, including many emails marked with some degree of urgency (the coffee room refrigerator is at mist urgent for people who use the coffee room refrigerator...maybe).

Bosses and equal colleagues and people whose work you are supervising deserve attention if only a full read and a "Sounds good" or simply a 'marked read' tickmark. Have a look twice a day to see if anything falls in this category.

Don't touch an email twice unless it's of vital importance. If it needs a response respond then and be done with it.

Emails about company-wide meetings or whatever the fucking require no more than ticking s Will/Can't Attend button. If it's important you'll find out about it in good time; in any case, lose no time with this shit.

Where you need to respond, respond succinctly and unequivocally. Done.

Gen-z are some of the softest, weakest, most pathetic, most ignorant, stupid people on the planet.

Everything is viewed through a filter of falsely concerned mental health awareness. Imagine having one of the email phobic types as a supervisor, mean girls part 2. Everything based on hinting around and mind reading because no direct communication is allowed, then boom your in the out group and or fired. Good riddance

Gen Z's biggest problem is going to be with the much larger generation of Millennials.

Not Gen X.

Not with the dying Boomers.

With Millennials.

Work emails are definitely an issue. I sometimes get enough that I could make reading and replying to them my full time job.

I ignore most of them unless they specifically ask me to do something.

[quote]Who the fuck gets 1,000 emails in a week?

Have you ever worked in a real office? There are lots of jobs where that happens. In my case the Project Coordinator got that kind of thing happening. And that's not even a very high level job. They have to talk to everyone on a team, plus all the managers, producers and outside vendors. It's really not a lot, if you break it down it's about 200 emails a day.

About 200 emails a day, in a day with 8 hours of work (480 minutes), means spending 50 minutes per day processing email, if you spend just 15 seconds on each one: a little over 10% of the workday.

Is there a single thing on this planet that DOESN’T give Gen Z anxiety?

Corporations are going to stop hiring them citing productivity reasons and older employees are going to have come in and save the day.

Fuck em

"About 200 emails a day, in a day with 8 hours of work (480 minutes), means spending 50 minutes per day processing email, if you spend just 15 seconds on each one: a little over 10% of the workday."

I spend about two seconds , if that. If I'm not familiar with the sender, I hit the delete button without even opening it. 98% of incoming email is junk/spam anyway, why bother spending 15 whole seconds with it.

I’m GenX and I HATE email—I’d prefer to communicate with colleagues via Slack or text. And certainly not phone calls.

This is the problem:

If you send an email, NOTHING GETS DONE.

If you send an IM, it gets done.

Emails are exactly that: mail. You get tons of mail in your mailbox, do you need to open everything? Do you open all the promotional balance transfer offers and read through them?

Thus, the chat becomes the priority. Email has created its own shitty reputation for worthlessness.

Part of the reason why they're filled with anxiety is their manic preoccupation with which gender pronoun to use in salutations.

With spam filters, and by spending a few minutes to set up email rules to organize incoming emails into folders for quick triage, it's super easy to deal with email.

As much gets done with email as with Teams/Slack, so that's a ridiculous assertion.

[quote]In addition to canceling the use of the thumbs-up emoji due to its “hostile” connotations

I'm old, can someone please explain this one to me?

There's no explaining it. They think the smiley emoticon is "hostile" too.

They're fucking idiots.

Thumbs up is associated with a fascist movement in the United States. The OK 👌 is a white power symbol.

It just occurred to me why Gen Z struggles with so much: they grew up with and normalized not being able to focus on a single task to the exclusion of the static of life. They don't like emails because they're written and you have to focus on just what's on the screen even if it's just for a few seconds. They don't like telephone calls because you have to listen and respond to just that one person and what they're saying. And they don't like actual jobs because they're paid for their time and are supposed to be putting all of their attention and effort into doing what they've been hired to do (and not looking at social media, listening to music or a podcast, or carrying on multiple conversations via text or DMs).

It's no wonder we have an explosion of people with ADHD incapable of dealing with the firehose of information projected at them. Their parents and teachers never trained them to focus. As an employer who hired hundreds of people, I've had that conversation with new employees that basically centers around paying attention to the task at hand. Thankfully I've gotten to the level at which you don't deal with this level of employee; I don't know how I'd cope with having to start at the basic level of not doing a dozen things at once because you're not giving any one of them the focus which it deserves. It's one thing to listen to music while you clean the house; it's entirely a different handicap when you can't ignore the static long enough to read an email.

And yeah, the flip side to that is the boomer who deletes emails unread and expects the sender to compensate. Were that my employee, they wouldn't be five minutes after I heard they deleted a thousand messages unread upon returning from vacation. But this points to the problem not being generational per se but more of one of hubris and expectation. If you're the kind of employee who gets a thousand emails a week, you'd better have the skills to deal with it. If you're the kind of employee who can't find the motivation to read your email and deal with them efficiently, you'd better develop the skills to deal with it. And we're quickly approaching the level of technology where you either have the skills and a job or a machine will.

It's true they are more homophobic. I hear 'pussy' and 'freak' hissed under breath often.

To me it's always seemed a kind of mental illness to say things to people you pass by.

[quote] Email has created its own shitty reputation for worthlessness.

Email itself is not the problem, it's the way that it's used that can make it worthless. I work in the law field and email is very important and useful. It's a paper trail.

^ This is why it's being ignored more and more frequently - the dreaded paper trail - but it certainly doesn't make a bad situation better. In fact, I think ignoring and deleting emails will lead to bigger problems, and lots more work for attorneys, especially if it can proven emails are intentionally going unread. Accountability is inevitable.

The very few interactions I've had with Zers have shown them to be heavily sedated or quite literally on the verge of a nervous breakdown, to the concern and/or amusement of their older co-workers.

[quote]Gen Z struggles with work.

Fixed it for you, OP.

R59 - Disney's newest live action film will be "The Adventures of Peter Prozac"

R59, the lion's share of them are heavily stoned. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I do enjoy my edibles on my time off, but no, not at work. Inappropriate.

I still find it hard to believe anyone gets 1,000 emails a week. I work from home and am in touch with 2 bosses and 2 friends. At most I generally get 2 emails a day. More if I am having a continuing chat with a friend, or have ordered something online and I get a receipt. I only hear from my bosses about a submission or a deadline. Otherwise they leave me alone to do my job. There was an issue last month about something which required back and forth for about 10 emails over a few days, but that was an exception. I do get some spam but just delete it without opening.

I am in the financial section of where I work - I have to have everything in email and able to document everything for various auditors. My phone message says 'please send me an email at blah blah, I do not check my phone messages'. In 4 years I have never checked my phone messages, fuck that.

If someone sends me a quick question on chat, fine but if it's more than just a random question I tell them to send me an email. It's just the way it is, sometimes you have to just deal with it.

HR talked to me about not answering chat messages and I asked if they would prefer to pay me to spend time screen shotting and copy/pasting chats and emailing them to myself or just having people know they need to email me to begin with. It's the only thing I am fairly inflexible on.

There should be one button that knocks out all email

[quote]I spend about two seconds , if that. If I'm not familiar with the sender, I hit the delete button without even opening it. 98% of incoming email is junk/spam anyway, why bother spending 15 whole seconds with it.

R47, Maybe you need a better spam filter, that's not what we are talking about here. All the emails are internal so you cant just "punch and delete" like some queen on her laptop. Some jobs require a lot of daily communication with co-workers and employees.

R63, I've been on vacation for a week, and returned back to work to find many hundreds of emails to go through. It's absolutely normal and expected for me.

I will spend the entire day upon my return, triaging and addressing the emails that built up while I was gone.

[quote]There should be one button that knocks out all email

How has R65 not heard of "Mark all as read"?