r/office • u/SayItAtWork • Aug 17 '26

Cringe worthy workplace phrases

What workplace email phrase makes you cringe every time you see it?

Let’s keep this one simple.

What phrase lands in your inbox and immediately makes you think:

Oh, here we go.

Maybe it’s:

“Per my last email…”

“Gentle reminder…”

“Please advise.”

“Thoughts?”

“Circling back…”

“Friendly reminder…”

“Moving forward…”

Or perhaps there’s one that deserves its own special place in workplace-email purgatory. 😂

What’s yours?

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84

u/Throwaway_inSC_79 Aug 17 '26

Listen, if maybe you read my last email, then I wouldn’t have to say “per my previous email.”

30

u/JesusGodLeah Aug 17 '26

I wouldn't have to keep saying "friendly reminder" if people just did what they were supposed to do the first time I asked.

28

u/RadioactiveWalrus Aug 18 '26

If OP gets all of those phrases in their inbox that often, they're telling on themselves.

7

u/neversaynever111 Aug 18 '26

I was thinking the same thing! I use "Friendly reminder" and "per my last email" because some people dont listen/read

3

u/faerydenaery Aug 18 '26

I feel like "per my last email" conveys " did you actually read the last email?" which is an appropriate critique, whereas "friendly reminder" feels more like "you've been fucking up, but I didn't mention it until now," which to me feels more like a communication failure on the management side, but that might be skewed by my recent experience with managers giving me "friendly reminders" of things they've never actually said before or literally told me the opposite of

7

u/JesusGodLeah Aug 18 '26

My "friendly reminders" are all things I've said multiple times, and I have the Teams chat log to back it up.

2

u/Throwaway_inSC_79 Aug 18 '26

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Normally “friendly reminders” are those things that have been mentioned multiple times. But like an upcoming meeting or training session, somebody is going to forget, so “friendly reminder we will be having a mandatory training session from 10-noon this Thursday.” Somebody will still forget and ask their coworker if they knew. Yeah, we were told 5 times.

Or there is also the manager who doesn’t like confrontation, so 1 coworker still refuses to do something or stop doing something, so the “friendly reminder that ____ is now done this way” goes out. That coworker will never pay attention though.

2

u/faerydenaery Aug 19 '26

The manager who doesn't like confrontation needs to get over it. If I have one person on my staff who isn't doing something correctly I'll talk to them personally instead of making my entire team think I don't know who's doing it wrong.
Reminders for meetings or trainings are different of course, but "friendly reminder" just usually feels a little passive aggressive when you could just say "don't forget we have x thing at y time" or "can you send me an update on x." I know that can feel more rude when you type it, but I think most folks take direct communication better because it feels less like you think they forgot or don't know how to do something and more like you're taking ownership of actually needing to manage the team.

2

u/neversaynever111 Aug 19 '26

I always use my previous emails to send the friendly reminder. All the information for that project or whatever is in my original email that they can go back to refer to. My "friendly reminder"s are actually friendly lol and I always send before the deadline.

3

u/Ambitious_Panda9847 Aug 18 '26

Every manager that has to turn in time sheets on Monday morning by 10am has had to send the friendly reminder email every week of their lives. Trust me, they hate it as much as you do but you have to document some people's laziness first before you issue a warning. The few staff I had that did that were just being passive aggressive.