is it weird to send work emails late at night?

by Alison Green on October 21, 2024

A reader writes:

Last night around 11 pm, my husband suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to email someone back about a meeting request, and was about to respond when I said it looked weird to be emailing at 11 pm. He asked why and I had no good reason, except that it seemed weird to let people know that you’re up and thinking about work that late?

I wonder if I’m extra-cautious because I work as a contractor and so I try very hard not to email at off-hours so as not to give the impression that they can expect me to be up all hours. But you’re not going to lose much time if you send it at 9:30 am rather than something sitting in their inbox when they arrive. What do you think?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

  • My team keeps holding lunches at a restaurant that doesn’t accommodate my allergy
  • When I turn down a job, can I recommend someone else?
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{ 198 comments }

{ 198 comments… read them below }

  1. Clearance Issues*

    schedule send the email so it’s a reasonable time to be up. I side eye the heck out of people who are up working at all hours.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      I genuinely find this mystifying. Who are you to judge the times at which other people find it convenient to do a brief work task? Or lengthy work task?

      In my field it’s normal for people to be working in all time zones, and both 9-5 and any time but 9-5. You just send off your part whenever it’s done. Rather than guess the start of work for every other person on the email chain, and send only within those slots. (On international teams, this would rule out all email sending options.)

      1. anonymous anteater*

        International teams are definitely an exception, but many people don’t work in those. Even if you are stretched over a few time zones (in the US), you can still distinguish what is a normal-ish time (6am or 7pm email), and actual midnight to 4am emails.
        I think about this more as I take on more responsibility for others. If they get an email from me at 10pm, they might feel like they are expected to reply. I certainly feel some kind of way when I see emails from the big boss that came in at 2:40am, and wonder if I ought to prioritize responding right away.
        Some people have a disclaimer in their email signature, acknowledging different work hours, and saying they don’t expect a response outside hours. If your organization walks the walk on stuff like that, that can work, but if they talk about work-life-balance and then senior bosses write emails at all hours of the day, that can signal that balance is not so highly valued after all.
        This could also matter from an individual contributor, who may not have formal hierarchical power, but is fairly senior and has a lot of status informally.
        It’s very easy now to schedule emails to arrive during the day! You can do it in google, apple mail…

        1. STEMprof*

          Eh, I work a second shift after my kids go to bed. I generally don’t send emails between 5:30 and 9pm (barring emergencies), because that’s family/dinner/bedtime. This means that I do send emails between 9pm and midnight ish (I don’t usually schedule them, because I have collaborators in different time zones). This is extremely common among my colleagues who are working parents. When I onboard people, I tell them that I will sometimes send emails after putting my kids down, but that that doesn’t mean that I expect them to work late (but I also tell them that they are free to flex their hours as needed for their personal life, as long as meetings and work get done). While I wish I didn’t have to put in the extra hours after my kids go to bed, it is vastly preferable and more family-friendly than having to stay in the office/online until 6 or 7pm. I think side-eyeing this is a bit odd, tbh. Maybe recognize that different people organize their personal time differently?

          1. Immaterial*

            I like materials like this. I have a manager who works a simmilar schedule to the one you mention and also starts her day later ( like 9:30). I like to start closer to 7 am. late night emails mean I have things to work on when I get start in the morning and I’m not sitting around wairing for work for a couple hours.

            To me, an email also reads as less urgent than say a teams message or a call. if I’m sending an email ( at least internally) it is because I can wait a bit to hear back from you.

            1. gimble*

              Exactly! I work an irregular schedule (generally 10ish to 6:30ish) with a lot of meetings, so I check and respond to emails whenever I can, often from my phone. My team deals with time-sensitive things, and I figure it’s a lot better to get them a response as soon as I can rather than hours past when they started work.

              I do schedule emails sometimes, but a) I can’t do so from my phone, b) sometimes I forget because hitting Send is so automatic, and c) I’ve been burned before by an important scheduled email not going through, so I don’t do it for anything really critical.

          2. anonymous anteater*

            “different people organize their personal time differently” this could be perfectly reasonable, and maybe it is where you work! But it could also be a degree of flexibility that is given to/asserted by senior people (your user name implies that you have some level of seniority), that other people lower in the org chart explicitly don’t get, or implicitly feel they can’t take. You need to keep your eyes open for these signs, especially since as a senior person, people might just comply with a perceived expectation rather than push back or be comfortable organizing their own time. I see this a lot in research environments where the support staff have a perception that they are at the beck and call of the scientists.
            You explaining this during onboarding is a very important part of that. Another would be to check in with someone who replies very quickly to your off hours emails, or sends emails or does other work in off hours a lot. The goal is not to force everyone into 9-5, but just double check that people feel able to organize their personal and work time on their own terms. I’d hope that your supervisor would also do this for you at least once.

            1. Immaterial*

              This is a great point. For me, seeing other people model these flexible hours and be explicit about how they manage their own schedule has been really helpful in a workpla that values personal time but also exists in an industry where seasonal overtime is unavoidable.

            2. STEMprof*

              Everyone who works on my team gets this level of flexibility regardless of seniority or role, and when I was much more junior, senior colleagues modelled this for me, which was very impactful. I think it’s also pretty standard in my field, so maybe this is field-specific. We also have regular check ins about workload, which is a much bigger issue in this field than working hours.

          3. Mentally Spicy*

            I’ve discovered so many people in this thread like me. I thought I was weird! As a freelancer (and only if I don’t have a hard deadline for something) I’ve discovered I prefer to work 9am-1pm, break for life stuff, and then work again 8pm-12am. These are the hours during which I can be most productive, while also getting the shopping/chores/school run/dinner period out of the way.

            Having said that I have started scheduling emails to go out in the morning rather than sending at midnight. Especially as a freelancer I don’t want my clients to either panic that I’m working way more hours than we’ve agreed or worry that I’m not getting the work done during “office hours”.

          4. LawyerMom*

            Yes, this exactly. I often work late and on the weekends if it means that I can go home at a reasonable hour, have dinner with my family, read stories to my child before bedtime, etc. It works for me and is the flexibility that many working parents need at child-rearing intensive times in our lives. Side-eyeing it just contributes the cultural pressure that’s breaking working parents.

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        The letter says “is it weird to send work emails late at night?” but I think the gist of it is more “is it weird to send work emails well outside my normal working hours?” I don’t think most people wold question an email coming in at midnight their time from a coworker in a time zone nine hours ahead, for instance. Likewise, if I worked 9am-5pm but I knew you were 9pm-6am, I wouldn’t question an email from you at 3am, but I would definitely wonder why you were emailing me at 3pm.

      3. Dean*

        Yeah obviously it’s different when you know people are in different time zones. But…when hypothetical Bob who works in the same office, with the same scheduled hours as you, is up sending emails at all hours of the night, Bob is a problem. Bob needs to get a life and stop setting a bad precedent.

        1. 1-800-BrownCow*

          Maybe Bob has a life, a very busy life and completely forgot about an email he wanted to send at 5pm and suddenly remembered at 11pm when he was about to collapse into bed exhausted. And Bob knew the next morning was going to be another crazy, busy day and was worried again he’d forget to send the email so instead he sent it at 11pm so he’d be able to fall straight to sleep and not lay there worrying about remembering to send the email in the morning.

          Don’t assume Bob is the problem. Making assumptions about people and their lives outside of work is the problem, not Bob.

          1. Falling Diphthong*

            If I’m up early and decide “Well, my body seems resolutely awake, and I have a medical appointment that will eat most of my morning, so I’m going to put in a couple of hours on the current work projects” I would be grateful that Bob had sent that reference file I need sometime overnight, when I wasn’t at my computer but he was at his. And now he’s asleep but I’m at my computer and can get right to the information he wanted to give me.

        2. Immaterial*

          maybe Bob’s life stuff just happens between 3 and 9 (like some parents) instead of 6 and 12.

        3. Seashell*

          My husband has a salaried job that is currently a hybrid situation without any specific set hours and co-workers in various time zones. Sometimes he wakes up before the alarm goes off and does some work. Sometimes he’ll take a break for an hour or two in the afternoon and watch TV or go to the gym. Sometimes he does e-mails on the train while commuting.

          He has a life, and he doesn’t expect people to respond immediately emails at any time.

        4. Saturday*

          But why are you concluding that Bob doesn’t have a life? If, like in the LW’s husband’s case, Bob suddenly remembered something he forgot to do earlier (sometimes these thoughts randomly come to me – especially in the shower), it’s weird to me that he’s supposed to go to the trouble to hide that he was thinking about it at night.

      4. Fluffy Fish*

        I don’t even look at what time emails are sent – it has never once mattered, just the content of the email.

        It’s interesting that some people do pay attention – I’m curious as to why? Is it just something you notice or is there a work reason for keeping tabs on time?

        1. JMC*

          Same here. I don’t care what time an email was sent and I don’t pay that much attention to what time I’m sending responses back. I just work what I work and sometimes it’s on the weekends or later at night, I work from home so it’s easy to do little things here and there.

          1. UKDancer*

            Yes I mean I don’t notice the time very much either. if one of my team is regularly sending emails at weekends I would check everything was OK because we’re not expected to work weekends.

            But I don’t notice the time particularly.

            1. Freya*

              Yeah, if one of my clients is regularly sending emails at midnight or weekends, I’m gently reminding them that they have a whole bunch of leave accrued that they can and should take and asking if there’s any tasks they can and should delegate.

        2. SimonTheGreyWarden*

          This is me – I never look at the time. If I see it come in I might think, huh, kinda late but whatever, but that’s only bc my email is synced to my phone.

        3. B*

          If it’s more than a sporadic thing, it can start to create a cultural expectation of constant availability and off-hours work.

          One person sends one email at 11 pm? Ok.

          One person starts doing it regularly? A little odd.

          Two people do it regularly? Three? Half your team? Now you’re starting to worry about looking bad if you are not working after 5 pm.

          Next time a promotion comes up, it goes to one of those people who are emailing at all hours. Then the next promotion after that.

          Soon you have a culture where the unspoken requirement is not only to work all hours, but to be *seen* working all hours.

        4. Ellis Bell*

          I suppose in some jobs it doesn’t matter when you received an email, but if you have a job where you’re away from your desk a lot AND things tend to be a “same day” level of time sensitive, the following happens: 1) You log on Tuesday morning, 2) You see a Monday email that is still on Unread 3) You panic a little bit because you checked your email before leaving the previous day, and thought you’d boxed all Monday’s requests off – did you miss this when you got called away for Urgent Thing? 4) You check the time stamp; phew, it was sent late in the evening and you couldn’t possibly have seen it. You can now treat this as Tuesdays first request you’re starting early on, rather than something you missed on Monday.

          1. Dr Vibrissae*

            This goes back to Alison’s answer: it’s going to depend on where you work. like the other commenters, I almost never notice the time an email was sent, but I rarely check email after work hours, not an I much to expected to. I just deal with things the next morning.

            1. allathian*

              Yes, this. My work email syncs to my work phone, which I keep on DND when I’m not working. We have very flexible work hours, so I wouldn’t bat an eye if I got an email that was sent at any time between 6 am and 11 pm on a weekday. The system at my org is that people send emails when it’s convenient for them and generally no responses are expected until the next business day. Truly urgent stuff is handled in other ways, but we have a very strong “right to disengage from work when not actually working” culture.

              That said, I was slightly taken aback by an email that was sent at 1.30 am on a Sunday…

        5. I Have RBF*

          This.

          With multiple tome zones, an email sent at 4 am my time is actually 7 am east coast time. Al; I care about is whether it has information I need in it. Yes, I know people who wake up with a “Oh, gotta write this down and send it now” in the middle of their night, but I also work with people that work in very different time zones, like east coast, UK, and Australia.

      5. Clearance Issues*

        I’m a QA person. I have actual evidence that my coworkers who are still working late at night have more errors than when they have plenty of sleep.
        I also know who all on my team is in the international calls/not in my timezone.

        On top of that, all of our managers encourage us to log off and have time to ourselves.

      6. Kuddel Daddeldu*

        I get work email at literally any hour, and I don’t care – my phone is programmed to go silent during a reasonable definition of “night” (9pm until 7am), for mails, texts and calls (except from a very select set of numbers, namely my SO, my elderly mother, and my direct manager who in ten years never abused the privilege).
        I’m in Europe, working closely with Asia and the US, plus traveling literally all over the place, so a client contacting me at what’s normal office hours for them may be in the middle of the night for me this week while being completely normal a week later. In an international setting, “normal office hours” are vague at best, even “weekend” has different definitions (Sat/Sun or Fri/Sat) or may not be A Thing at all – ships or offshore units work 24/7, not 9-5 for five days a week.
        In my line of work, email is seen as “read it when you are at your desk”. If anyone really needs an immediate response, there’s Teams (where you can see if the recipient is online or not) or a phone call as a last resort (but we are all trained to silence our phones when not working). And that is despite we may have to deal with (literally) sinking ships from time to time – there is an emergency response number that is manned 24/7.

    2. Venus*

      I would have an issue if a manager did it regularly because I’d question their work-life balance and expectations of their employees. Doing it occasionally, especially for something time-sensitive, seems completely fine. I support a response late at night in the specific situation of responding to a meeting invite the next day.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        I had a manager who did it, but she had a multi-generational household, and sometimes things waited until the grandkids were in bed. She was also a known night owl and would have been aghast to think any of her staff thought they needed to keep her hours.

        It’s definitely a “know your audience” type of thing.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          That’s the key thing: if you’re going to be the “emailing at all hours outside of work” person, you also owe it to your stuff to make it clear they don’t need to do that and back that up with action by not punishing people for not replying outside of work. Lots of people do the first part without the second part, unfortunately.

          1. Hannah*

            Respectfully, it sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences with this and are then making a blanket judgement for the entire practice. I (and reading other comments, I’m not alone) have mostly experienced this when the action matches the intent just fine!

            So if you assume that the actions are supportive of flexing your work life balance, do you still think it’s all that big of a deal to send an 11 pm email?

            1. Ellis Bell*

              What you’re describing happens a lot, but so does the experience of C&C. It’s not unheard of for bosses to expect instant responses and round the clock availability. I’ve had bosses who would never dream of expecting me to be answerable on email, even if they themselves were sending them in the evening, and I’ve had ones who absolutely did! Ones who would follow up with a phone call and ask me why I was unresponsive. Then there’s the middle ground; who would say nothing about the lack of response in the moment but give loads of passive aggressive hints the next day. I’ve had bosses with similar mixed experiences who wisely clear it up in advance: “I email late at night sometimes, please don’t feel you have to respond until general office hours, in fact, turning off your email is a good idea to fully switch off”.

              1. Caramel & Cheddar*

                Yeah, AAM has had dozens of letters about people who email / text at all hours and expect a response, so I’m really confused by the people insisting it’s a super common understanding that you don’t have to respond to contact outside of work. There’s a reason there are so many laws coming into effect about this kind of thing!

            2. Caramel & Cheddar*

              If the actions are supportive then it’s fine, which is what I said in my comment (i.e. you have to both tell people and be supportive if you’re going to be the Emails Late At Night person). I still wouldn’t do it, personally, but I think the benefits of using schedule send far outweigh the benefits of warning everyone this is how I work and I don’t expect them to follow suit. Other people’s calculus may vary.

            3. Le Sigh*

              I’ve seen what C&C is talking about happen in multiple offices. I work in spaces that tend to be rapid response-oriented by necessity. That can sometimes have the effect of making everything feel like it needs your attention now, even if it doesn’t. And if the senior staff are all responding to emails until 10pm on a regular basis, it can make the rest of staff feel explicit or implicit pressure to keep up. Maybe no one’s punished outright — maybe there’s even a work culture that on paper states it commits to work/life balance — but it can easily turn into a game of one-upping.

              That’s not great or healthy, but what has helped with that is leadership proactively setting rules around communications — asking folks to set up DND so they don’t get notifications after hours and feel they have to respond, but also asking people to be thoughtful about what they call “urgent” and scheduling messages within a certain window unless truly urgent. I schedule send anything after 6pm, and I proactively let my team know that I don’t expect them to respond to anything that comes in after hours unless I reach out to them with something urgent. It costs me nothing and no one is left guessing.

              This isn’t needed in every industry or office I’m sure, but mostly just explaining how I’ve seen that pressure unfold, even unintentionally.

    3. Timothy*

      No, a scheduled send is exactly what this is great for. Just because you remembered something at 11pm, doesn’t mean your E-Mail has to be sent right away. Thinking, “Oh, I’ll just remember tomorrow” can be a recipe for disaster. :)

      I’ve had brainwaves in the evenings, on weekends, while driving .. my brain sure doesn’t stop working at 530pm.

    4. spcepickle*

      My email scheduler only works if my email program is open (so not when my computer is off while I am commuting). I am often one of the last people in my office (because of my preferred schedule). So if I am trying get a calendar invite out to everyone as soon as possible, doing it late at night when if crosses my mind is going to be the best and easiest option for me. Your side eye is your life, but I would encourage you to consider that what works really well for me, my work life balance, my need to get something crossed off my list so I can sleep, something that does not affect you at all – might not require side eye.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        I tested this out this afternoon at work, and yep, I have the same experience. The way that our IT department set up Outlook means my laptop has to be on and you have to be working (we are auto-logged out after 20 minutes of inactivity for security reasons) for this to work.

        This is simply not an option for many of us.

      2. Lady Sally*

        Yes, this is really frustrating to me and a major reason why I still end up sending the late night emails. (Also Outlook)

    5. Anon Attorney*

      i’m in an industry where it’s common for working parents to get through their e-mail early morning before their kids wake up or late night after kids bedtime, without expectation of a response until normal working hours. so i would have an open mind – not everyone is “working all hours,” some people need flexibility. this is true for non-parents, too, by the way.

      1. Lady Danbury*

        Yup, this isn’t abnormal across many industries/companies where I live. Obviously it’s a know your office situation, but my company in particular tends to empty out between 4:30 and 6 because of other commitments but then people may pop back onto or even actual work later. The recipient generally wouldn’t feel the need to respond unless it’s truly urgent.

        1. STEMprof*

          This, this, this. I actually think it’s somewhat family un-friendly to assume that it’s “normal” to work 5-7pm but not “normal” to work (online) 8-10pm. Let people live their lives. Being required to work 5-7 would be a dealbreaker for me.

        2. UKDancer*

          Yes I’ve 2 chaps in my team who have the school run some days so log off at 3 and then back on 5-7. I don’t have a problem with them doing that.

      2. Kuddel Daddeldu*

        Absolutely!
        I look at my email at breakfast to “get into my day” before my commute (can’t very well attend to messages while cycling!) and may send a few quick answers around 7am, mostly to questions that came in from Asia overnight (I’m in Europe). I expect answers to emails “next business day” in my contact’s time zone and work week, not “next 5 minutes” – and I take the same liberty with timing my responses. If it appears urgent and/or I won’t be able to apply next business day, I’ll send a brief note to that effect. For periods of unresponsiveness (such as travel), scheduled auto-replies are helpful for all involved.

    6. T.N.H*

      Question, do you also side eye people who email at 5 a.m. (assuming 9-5 hours)? If not, this is just bias against night owls.

        1. Dahlia*

          Really? Some schools start at 7am and people can have long commutes, or want to go to the gym in the morning or whatever. It’s not particularly strange to wake up early in the morning to me.

          1. amoeba*

            For me/my work, it would be unusual to check you work e-mail first thing in the morning after waking up. That generally happens when you come into the office/log in from home. After school run/gym/commute/whatever.
            I mean, I see how flexibility can be really helpful, but disconnecting from work for the time you’re not working is also really, really important and with that kind of super-flexible arrangements it can easily happen that you’re never “really off” and work is just always present for your entire day (as you write – checking e-mail first thing, getting messages after dinner, etc.). I don’t really think that’s healthy or helpful, honestly, even though I’m aware it cannot always be helped – but I’d definitely argue for at least trying if it is possible.

    7. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      Also, for those of us with ADHD, it can be much better/easier/more effective to do the thing when we think of it.

      2. gimble*

        Thank you! I have a reputation for working at all hours and take every possible opportunity to tell people it’s not that I work *long* hours–I just have to do things when my brain is functioning, and some days that’s in 20-minute bursts from 8am to 1am!

      3. I Have RBF*

        This. If I don’t do/write a thing when I think of it, it may pop off the memory queue. I’ve taken to keeping a notebook by my bed, and post-its, so that I can make my brain offload stuff by writing reminders to myself.

    8. Tippy*

      I don’t think I have ever paid attention to the time an email is sent. Hell, unless it’s an email from today I’m not even sure I know how to find the freakin’ time an email was sent (on Outlook).

      1. amoeba*

        Do we have different Outlook settings? In mine, it’s literally right there in the list. to the right of the name and subject matter (under the paperclip symbol if there’s an attachment). I’m honestly quite confused by the many people who say they don’t notice, because it’s basically impossible to overlook in my Outlook.

        1. gimble*

          I *see* it, I just don’t consciously retain the information, unless there’s some specific reason to do so. It probably is possible to change what info displays, though.

    9. Trout 'Waver*

      Why? Some people like to go through their inbox off hours. Sometimes a server glitch can hold emails until the middle of the night. It could be someone working in another time zone.

      Asynchronous communication is great because you get to it when you get to it. That’s the point.

    10. Strange but true*

      Be mindful of what your email system does.

      I have an odd email system that when your email is sent, it shows when you scheduled the email as the time sent. (I have no idea why.)

      For example, if at 6:30 a.m. I schedule an email to be sent at 10 a.m. the recipient will see time sent as 6:30 a.m. when they receive it at 10 a.m.

      1. CV*

        If I were to receive that, it would look to me like the system held onto it for 3.5 h and I would worry that people think I’ve been ignoring them all that time.

    11. CityMouse*

      I’m on the east coast, I have colleagues in Hawaii. 11 for me is 5 for them, so it’s really not a big deal.

      1. amoeba*

        “(or expected to do so)”

        Pretty sure that is the problem here – if enough people work at all hours, you start doubting that part.
        I personally don’t care very much, but it’s also a pretty rare occurrence – if all of my more senior colleagues started regularly mailing me at 11 p.m., I’d certainly start worrying whether leaving and disconnecting at 5.30 was really OK or actually made people think I was lazy!

        1. Kuddel Daddeldu*

          My company is pretty global, so *someone* is working pretty much any time of the day – but no single person is working 24/7, of course.
          I’d honestly find it weird to scrutinize when an email was sent (except when I hunt down phishing mails). Email is asynchronous, and that’s a Good Thing. I can turn off email notifications when I need deep focus, so it may well take hours until I notice a new email even during the workday.

    13. Random Bystander*

      I’d find that kind of mystifying–I never look at the send time (the date, sure). I figure email is asynchronous and the person I’m emailing will reply whenever they’re next in and have had a chance to look for the info I’m asking about, and I figure they’ll email me whenever it’s convenient for them but not expect anything back unless it’s during my work hours.

      But then I have to log into my work computer to even get the email (as do all my co-workers except for those above me).

    15. I Have RBF*

      LOL. I live on the west coast, and work with people on the east coast, and I’m a night owl. I don’t start work until 9 am west coast time, which is noon for them. I often take a longer lunch at 2 pm, then work until 7 pm. So most of my work is done when they are offline. I’m a sysadmin, it actually is better for me to make changes when people aren’t online.

    16. Powercycle*

      Whether or not sending emails late at night is weird depends on the workplace. It’s definitely not expected where I work. And doing it regularly might get you a talk about expectations concerning your work hours. Unless it’s urgent and/or something that needs to be communicated first thing in the morning, I simply email myself to remind me to do it in the morning.

    17. Gustavo*

      Why are you worried about when they work? Not everyone has the same lifestyle or priorities. For me, my job is a normal 8-5 but it’s human services and I’m a director. I do sometimes have crucial things I think about randomly at night that are vital and I’d much rather send a quick email while I think about it than have to add some sort of reminder to myself to address in the morning and it will stress me out all night. That’s because it works for ME (and I do make sure my team knows I don’t need or expect them to check or respond to ANY emails outside of work hours and I do encourage them to unplug when they leave for the day). I don’t ever judge or worry about what times other people need to send an email because that’s not my business or my place.

  2. Lizabeth*

    This is where scheduling what time an email gets sent out comes in handy. I have done the “oh, I forgot something…” wrote the email late at night and scheduled it to be delivered 9 am the next morning.

    1. Zephy*

      Schedule send (at least in Outlook) requires you to be logged in and active in Office365 to work, though, so you can’t schedule something to go out the next day at 9 AM and then log out. Maybe other clients don’t have this problem but Outlook will tell you that items in your outbox won’t send if you close the program.

      1. Anon Attorney*

        That hasn’t been my experience. Or at least, there’s no problem logging out and then logging back in in the morning and the e-mail having been sent.

      2. Elitist Semicolon*

        My Outlook will send if my laptop is off because the message is queued at the server level. I think this might be a difference in releases and/or specific workplace configurations.

        1. Helewise*

          My old laptop would send Outlook messages scheduled when it was in sleep mode, but my new one won’t. I do a lot of after-hours work and it’s a little aggrevating.

      3. LL*

        yeah and it’s ridiculous that Outlook won’t send a scheduled email if you’re not logged into it. The whole point of scheduling an email to send later is that you won’t be on at that time!

    2. DrSalty*

      Same, this is helpful for me bc then I can stop thinking about it once I’ve done something to address.

    3. Khatul Madame*

      Outlook Schedule send does not work with meeting invites. And even with emails it sometimes doesn’t work. It may be due to local configuration, but it’s definitely not a universal solution.

  3. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    My memory is such that if I remember an email at 11 pm I better send it now because I won’t remember by morning, or (even if I write it down) it will keep me up worrying about sending it.

    But also yes, schedule send is your friend because I have one coworker who will email back at all hours and even if she is on vacation.

  4. whatadeebee*

    For LW1 – If I’m in this situation, I use the schedule-send feature in Outlook to delay sending the email until 8am the following morning. I have a set schedule, so when I’m replying outside those hours, it can look odd to my team.

    Other people in my company flex their hours, and they have a line in their signature indicating this. It says something like “my working hours may not be your working hours. Please respond at your earliest convenience in accordance with your own schedule.” This excludes urgent messages; we use an Urgent flag for those to make sure they get attended to right away.

  5. Jennifer Strange*

    In this case I would either schedule send or send myself an email with a reminder. Now that I’m a manager I’m even more cautious of setting unrealistic expectations for time outside of work hours!

  6. The Cosmic Avenger*

    I think it depends on your industry, although I agree it’s important not to give the impression that a reply should be expected any time. I often don’t answer emails outside of my work hours, even by a few minutes, unless it’s an easy thing to answer or it seems urgent. But occasionally I’ll respond to things way outside of hours, just because I don’t want to forget. However, I think and hope that I do it infrequently enough that I’m not creating that expectation of availability. I don’t bother with scheduling, except maybe one a few rare occasions.

  7. Gem*

    Just schedule it.

    I’ve been dealing with a workplace bullying situation lately and the bully in this case loves to send emails between 11 and midnight, which everyone else finds absolutely insufferable.

    1. HonorBox*

      I hope that people aren’t replying to the bully in this situation and that everyone who finds this insufferable includes managers. Or at least you’re saying something to managers about this.

      1. Gem*

        Everyone knows. She’s been talked to about it. She can’t really be fired due to having an extremely niche skill set in an extremely niche field – she’d be impossible to replace. Yes, managers know. Yes, I am job hunting. No, it’s not going well.

        1. allathian*

          I hope you also have buy-in from management not to reply to her emails at all hours. I wish email worked like SMS does so that you could mute individual users.

  8. Josh G*

    I had a boss (we all worked remotely) who was semi recently divorced and living alone. I was in my mid-20’s, had just moved to take the job, and living alone. I would work non-linear hours and on occasion when I would send an email at 9pm, he’d call me to discuss it because he knew I was up and not doing anything. Quickly learned how to use the schedule email function. Of course the downside was sending emails at 7:30am and getting calls then when I was still pretty much in bed LOL. There’s a fine art to these things!!

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      This reminds me of why when I schedule emails, I always schedule them to arrive in someone’s inbox at a time where I’d be ready to have a conversation about the contents. Nothing scheduled to be delivered before I’ve had a cup of coffee!

  9. Hendry*

    I would just send when it’s convenient. I don’t really feel a responsibility to manage other people’s inboxes. We’re adults and we know what needs to be responded to immediately, what doesn’t, and so on.

    1. Seal*

      Exactly. I had a new manager who screamed at me first thing on a Monday morning because I emailed her the previous Friday afternoon. She insisted I shouldn’t have emailed her after hours unless it was an emergency and since she didn’t have my cell phone number she had no way to contact me. Since she left early that Friday without telling anyone and the email in question was clearly not urgent and send during our regular office hours, I was speechless. The irony of her regularly sending email at all hours was not lost on me.

    2. CityMouse*

      This. My coworkers live all over the US, including Hawaii, and we work flexible hours, so it doesn’t bother me to get emails after hours. I just don’t check my email when I log off.

  10. Jane Bingley*

    This depends on the context, but often I’ll just add a brief line explaining the unusual time. Something like “I just realized I didn’t get back to you and wanted to hit send before I forget!” to an external relationship, or “I didn’t want this keeping me up at night, hitting send now” to a colleague.

  11. Antilles*

    #2 is absurd. I could sorta understand if that was the only restaurant that worked. They still should come up with some better plan, but I’d at least sympathize if there were dueling accommodations that made it impossible to juggle.
    But the idea that they *have* restaurant options but the planner just doesn’t want to bother with coordinating it? Come on. Send a Teams invite requesting RSVPs in advance, call a couple days, then adjust the day of if your number is off by 1-2.

    1. Throwaway Account*

      Alternatively, OP can just go to the peanut lunch (since I don’t think the smell can hurt them?) and just announce loudly, I cannot eat here because of a peanut allergy, but I value the time with you all and did not want to be excluded from the conversation. If they are really in a mood, also throw the person scheduling the lunches under the bus and name them.

      I guess you cannot do that but I have no more “f”s left to give today and I’m over it!

      1. allathian*

        My limit is that there are no circumstances under which I’d find it acceptable to skip a meal to be seen to be a team player. Luckily my intolerances are common and easily accommodated (mainly lactose intolerance).

        My tomato and strawberry allergies can be a bit of an issue sometimes, but luckily my symptoms are slightly annoying rather than severe, never mind life-threatening, so sometimes I make a conscious decision to eat tomato or strawberry regardless.

    2. Hyaline*

      So…I went into this expecting to agree, based on “the restaurant doesn’t accommodate my allergy” title phrasing But this is a smidge different than that. Yes, it’s awful that LW got ill once–and it’s not acceptable if the restaurant claimed a dish is peanut-allergy-safe and for it to not be safe. However…I can’t tell what “was supposed to be peanut free” means. It almost sounds like LW ordered a dish normally off the menu, did not ask about accommodation for severe allergy, and when she got ill, wrote this restaurant off (because I’d expect to hear “I talked to them about my allergy” if that was the case). One one hand, I think a “one strike” policy is fair…for personal use. But to insist that a restaurant is off the list for everyone without even trying to actually ask if they can accommodate the allergy? Because “you’re not comfortable,” not because they have actively refused to accommodate you or explained why cross-contamination is unavoidable in their kitchen or whatever the issue is? Ehhhhh….I’m feeling a little less sympathetic, actually. (And I have food restrictions.)

      1. Sophie*

        You clearly don’t deal with severe allergies. Every time she is exposed to peanuts, there is the risk that the reaction could worsen and she could go anaphylactic. I am sure her allergist told her to absolutely avoid all peanuts and possible exposures like her life depends on it, because it does. They basically hand out epi-pens for all severities of nut allergies now because the reaction can escalate so suddenly. Also, she said she’s ill for DAYS after an exposure. That sounds absolutely miserable. To ask her to risk at the very least, her health and comfort, and at the very most, her life, is so inconsiderate as to be unkind. To judge her for not wanting to risk all that again is ridiculous.

        1. Gumby*

          If you have allergies severe enough that you feel ill for days after exposure, then it seems to be best practice to mention your allergy and ask about it any time you are eating food you didn’t prepare. I’d never rely on “oh, it’s french fries, there are no peanuts in french fries” because there is a chance you found a restaurant that uses peanut oil for their fries. (I do not know if that example makes sense – peanuts are not my allergy. Also, mine are more minor but I still ask.)

          If she did mention/ask and the server assured her the food was safe yet it still made her sick – absolutely no need to risk it ever again.

          However, refusing to go to a restaurant because they failed to read your mind and you only assumed the food was peanut-free because *you* wouldn’t make it with peanuts or peanut oil or whichever ingredient caused issues is a slightly different story.

          I can’t tell from the way OP phrased it which situation is more accurate.

          Either way, it would be nice to have a bit more variety to the lunches if it’s available.

    3. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      Yeah this is just someone who either 1. doesn’t want to take the time to plan ahead or has way too much on their plate to be able to plan ahead. Wither way it needs to be addressed with their manager. I would specifically say why are other sensitivities and allergies (gluten, lactose) being accommodated but mine cannot. And it’s not like its a really unusual allergy.

      And this is a reoccurring lunch, so 1. can’t they put it on the same time and day every month to be helpful? and 2. the planner should be able to set them up in advance. Like batch reserve that every 3rd Thursday they have a reservation and the restaurant plans on X people then the week before confirm how many will be there. They could even rotate where they go.

  12. Clisby*

    I’m remembering back to when I was a contractor (computer programming). I sent emails at all hours, but fortunately, nobody thought they had to respond right away.

    Once I got a response from a co-worker asking me if there was something wrong with the time setting on my computer because my email said it was sent at 3:30 a.m. Nope! My second child still had to be fed about 2 am, and by the time he was back to sleep I just went downstairs and started work for the day, since that was easier than going back to bed and getting back up at 7 a.m. to get my daughter ready for school.

    I worked at a place where people kept all kinds of strange hours, so this wasn’t much of an outlier. I don’t remember anyone complaining that they thought co-workers expected immediate answers to emails. Core working hours were 9-3, so anytime in there was usually fine.

  13. jenny*

    Honestly, if it was an one-off, I wouldn’t worry about scheduling the email. If I got an email from someone at 1:00am once, I’d probably wonder about it, but not get too worked up. I might even wonder if email had been down for a while and it was getting to me late.

    Obviously, people want to avoid sending non-working hour emails regularly.

    Sometimes I think people in the comments get too worked up about things like this.

    2. Good Enough For Government Work*

      100% agreed. People here get strangely exercised about this issue in a completely disproportionate way to what I’ll laughingly call ‘real life’.

    3. musical chairs*

      When I start new people on my team, they hear pretty early on that they do not need to respond to messages outside of working hours. As much as I am willing to accommodate different emotional realities and anxieties, if I am incredibly clear about my expectations, I cannot then be expected to help an employee deal with the consequences of disregarding those clearly stated expectations.

      It’s inappropriate for me to bend over backwards to accommodate at that level. If Schedule Send worked consistently with my organizations IT policies, that be different. But it’s not consistent or easy to make sure no one receives an email (!!) outside of their working hours. All I can do is be clear that it’s not an emergency and show less tech-savvy staff how to turn off notifications after hours. If someone has a larger than necessary to a late email, that’s beyond my purview/skillset to assist with.

    4. londonedit*

      Yeah, I’m not sure I’d even notice (I don’t tend to spend time looking at when people have emailed me) and even if I did I don’t think I’d dwell on it more than ‘Oh, Jim was working late yesterday’. Especially since Covid, people have all sorts of different working schedules and people are more likely to have email/Teams etc on their phones, so it’s not such a big deal. Personally, I don’t deal with work emails after my usual working hours, but other people may be doing things like taking time out during the day to do the school run, and then catching up later, or whatever. Unless there was a pattern where Jim was always sending emails at 3am or something I don’t think I’d think anything of it – I certainly wouldn’t feel any pressure to start sending emails at 11pm myself.

      1. I Have RBF*

        My main coworkers are all remote, and all over the world. Some work essentially split shifts due to caregiving responsibilities. I seldom even notice when stuff is sent.

  14. Lily Potter*

    I wish that the LW#2 (team lunch issue) was more explicit about how these lunches get organized. Are these company sanctioned team lunches, organized and paid for by the employer? If so, the reply about “going above the organizer’s head” is the correct advice.

    However, I’ve worked at places where “organized team lunch” meant a bunch of people in the office going out as a group together without company sanction. These were organized not by the boss’ admin but by a line staff member who liked organizing such things. Everyone was included in the invites but everyone also paid their own way. If that’s the situation for LW#2, it’s NOT good advice to run to the organizer’s boss and complain…..it’s just going to come across as “organizer is being mean to me, make her stop”. I think in that case, I’d start being very frank with co-workers that ask why she’s not coming along……if they hear “I can’t go to House of Saigon for lunch anymore; it activates my peanut allergy” often enough, they might be good allies in getting the venue changed every once in a while.

      1. allathian*

        Yes! The LW transferred out of the old team and started working with another team with a less disengaged manager. Apparently in this case the coworker was organizing the team lunches because the manager didn’t want to do it.

  15. HonorBox*

    I think in the situation presented in the first letter, I’d send the email, but just include a brief note at the top telling the person that you just remembered that you hadn’t replied or that you wanted to send it then so you didn’t forget or something like that. I think even if the office culture is such that late night emails aren’t that weird, you’re still tipping your cap to the fact that YOU have knowledge that the email is coming well outside of business hours and YOU are owning that for a specific reason. Especially if the husband is a manager or is supervising the project he’s emailing about, it gives the recipient some understanding that the situation is more of a one-off than the norm.

  16. Juicebox Hero*

    I recently had an email exchange with someone who had in her signature line something along the lines of “my working hours are not necessarily your working hours. Please don’t feel obligated to respond outside your working hours.”

    If I worked remotely, I’d appreciate a note like that and chalk it up to someone being a night owl, working around a situation, in a very different time zone etc.

    1. Pretty as a Princess*

      This is almost exactly what my email signature says.

      Scheduling emails only works *if you are connected to the network when the scheduled time hits*. If you are someone who is doing work travel, that may well not make a whole lot of sense. (If I’m sending the email at 9 PM because that’s when I got to my hotel after a day at a conference and associated dinners, then so be it. Because if I have to be on the road by 5 AM to get a flight – you’re not getting an email scheduled for delivery at 8 AM because I will already be in a metal tube shooting through the sky. You’re either getting it when I send it at 9 AM, or I’m sending it at 5 AM. Or you are waiting until I am back in the office! )

      1. Cat Lady*

        This!! I get the ease of scheduling *when it works* but it isn’t a panacea either. If someone isn’t banging down your door to respond to their weird hours email, just let it be and respond in your working hours!

  17. Bast*

    While I agree that changing the delivery time for the next morning is something that can be done, I work in an industry where you have some offices encouraging burning the midnight oil, some that encourage more work-life balance, and some where people elect to shunt answering emails to weird hours because there’s no other convenient time for them to do so. I wouldn’t necessarily assume anything, and at least to me, it wouldn’t be weird. Annnnd this is just talking about other attorneys. Clients? Forget it. Anything is fair game. I’ll admit to wondering a bit what exactly made a client think about me at 3:12 am to want to send me an email, but the end result is the same — I answer at 8 am ish when I walk in.

    1. I Have RBF*

      I am one of those people who handles my personal affairs at odd hours. I would absolutely send an email to my attorney at 3:12 am on Sunday titled “Set up appointment to revise will”, and not expect a response until Monday afternoon.

  18. ArchivesPony*

    Not trying to be snarky but genuinely, do people really pay that close attention to when an email is sent? I don’t think I’ve once paid that close of attention to the time

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I definitely notice when someone in a leadership position sends an email after, say, 8pm. Maybe there’s a good reason for it, but it feels like they don’t model good work/life balance when they do and/or that they don’t care about or understand the optics of a senior leader doing it. I work in an industry where there is sometimes evening activity, but if it’s a random Monday night when nothing is going on, I definitely notice.

    2. Pocket Mouse*

      I do. I don’t try to, necessarily, it just happens- my brain is wired to gather that information. Like if I log on in the morning and see a new email under Outlook’s ‘yesterday’ section, I’ll glance at the time sent to know if I somehow missed it before I left, or if I couldn’t have been expected to see it until the morning. I’ve had IT tickets closed over the weekend per their automated messages, which is noticeable because those emails are wedged between other automated emails set to run daily, including over the weekend. Knowing that there are people like me who notice the time sent and may form conclusions based on it, I try to be careful about scheduling emails to send during business hours too.

      1. Freya*

        The vast majority of the times I notice when an email was sent, it’s because it’s a bill that was sent after hours that someone is complaining wasn’t paid the same day it was sent.

        Which is why I looked up the legal definition of when emails are received for the purposes of contracts in Australia (if not defined in the contract, it’s at the first moment it is possible that it COULD be read, which by the strictest definition is when it hits the recipient’s server, but it’s informally accepted (but not to be relied upon in court) that it’s the next moment that’s within business hours or the next moment that is within the employee’s regular hours, whichever is earlier. So it’s to my benefit to not visibly work outside my regular hours or to make it explicit in some way that this is not normal)

    3. Turquoisecow*

      I have email on my phone so if I wake up at 8:00 and see an email I know it came in overnight (or early that morning, but the office hours usually start at 8:30)

      Before smartphones, if I got into the office at 8:30am and saw an email from my boss that wasn’t there when I’d left the day before I’d know that my boss had sent it overnight or early that morning, and I’d often think it was urgent. (It often was not.)

      If you’re in a workplace where people work flex schedules and remotely or across time zones, it might not be odd to get an email at 11:00pm from the boss because they just had a thought they wanted to get down, or they realized they forgot to respond earlier. But if you’re in a 9-5 type environment, getting an email at 11:00pm would mean the person was working after hours, and would imply that some urgent emergency was going on. Also, if you have employees who are hourly and non-exempt, they may feel as though they also need to be thinking about work in the middle of the night and they absolutely should not be unless you want to pay them overtime.

    4. Selina Luna*

      I don’t pay attention to when an email is sent exactly, but during COVID, I set up my phone to alert me when I got an email. I eventually learned how to turn on email notifications only during working hours, but before that, I would get very annoyed when a student emailed me at 1:30 a.m. I would get more annoyed when the student would send a “follow-up” at 8:00 the same morning, but that was a different issue, and I would discuss that etiquette with students.

    5. Harrie*

      I mean, I don’t put a lot of effort into it, but I certainly notice it just like I notice who sent it, the subject line, who else is copied on it, and so on. It’s information that is presented to me when I look at my screen so of course I’m aware of it.

    6. DrSalty*

      I do because I want to know if my reports are working late. If they are, I want to talk to them about whether their workload needs adjustment. I also want to be sure my team is not emailing clients at all hours to create the expectation we are constantly available.

    7. LL*

      I don’t. I think it’s weird that other people do.

      Although what I suspect is actually happening is that people have their email client on their phone and they don’t turn off notifications when they aren’t working, so emails pop up. In that case the solution is to either not have your email client on your phone or to turn off notifications when you aren’t working.

    8. Allonge*

      I notice, I just don’t care that much.

      All our higher level management has meetings practically all day, every day. When are they supposed to send emails?

      People on my team are functional adults. If someone is working regularly until midnight, sure, that is a problem, but for our manager, not me, and a workload problem, not a working time problem.

      Other than that, we have flexitime for a reason, and I make use of it too, and I don’t even have kids. Sometimes (like today) I want to finish something instead of getting back to it tomorrow morning and then I send it off to the recipient, a bit after our usual office hours. Nobody ever complained.

  19. François Caron*

    I’ve done that. Our company has offices around the world. Sometimes, you think of something and need to put it out in writing before you forget it. It also gives someone starting their day elsewhere in the world a chance to follow-up on the email.

    Important detail: I don’t expect any response from anyone outside of their normal work hours. I prefer they respond only while they’re on the clock.

  20. Rebekah*

    I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that working 9-5 is not automatically the best work-life balance for a lot of people. My husband has a very flexible schedule with few mandatory events/meetings (and those are mostly evenings/weekends lol. This is industry standard and totally unavoidable.) He will often wake up at 4am or stay up until midnight working and sending emails. However he can (and does) knock off for a morning to take a hike with the dog, tries to routinely come home at 4 to help with the kids while I make dinner, takes an afternoon off to clean the garage or take a kid to their drs appointment, etc. Yes sometimes it’s a pain, he’s missed important family gatherings because they were held on weekends when everyone else is off and he’s working, but often it’s amazing.

  21. I should really pick a name*

    #1
    There’s a segment of society who cares (and sometimes feels very strongly) about this, but most people aren’t even looking at the time stamp on an email.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      A lot of my email would fall into “Here is the reference information you will eventually need” or “The red llama files are posted HERE and ready for your input; due date is next Thursday.” No one expects any response to these other than, before next Thursday, I will email “I have finished the red llama files and put them on the server.”

      The occasional question that needs a timely response, that’s either “when I see it” or “when I have time for it if it requires some extra steps.” So if you sent things at 8 pm my time, 6 pm your time, and I see it at 8 am or 10 am or 1 pm when I start work (and the emailer has no idea which of those might be true Wednesday), that’s when I respond. Sometimes I am on my computer at 8:15 pm, though, and if I see the email and it’s a quick thing I’ll just do it so it’s off my list of mental things. Which I think is normal for a lot of jobs–the varied hours, the not knowing someone else’s “time to review email” time for any given day, the different approaches to what action means I’m not fretting about the red llama thing when I class myself as off work.

      That email tagline about “my hours are not your hours” makes sense, but in a lot of fields is understood as the default.

  23. Dean*

    It’s wise to be careful about infringing on people’s personal time outside of work. Emails are less intrusive than other forms of communication but at a minimum you should be letting your colleagues know that you don’t expect them to read or respond to your late night brain wave emails until the start of business the following day. I once had a manager who would start calling and texting me at 6am when my work day started at 8am. I hated that man with a passion for that.

    1. STEMprof*

      Okay but calling and texting are completely different from email. In most workplaces, email is just a form of asynchronous communication and there is not an expectation to immediately respond, as there is with calls (and I would also argue that texts come across as more urgent than email). I email late at night (and everyone I work with knows that this is because of my kids), but would *never* call or text then.

    2. I Have RBF*

      If I had a boss that called and texted me before my start time regularly, they would very soon not be my boss. That kind of BS is an RGE*. I am a night owl, and have had various people decide to “make” me into an early bird.

      * RGE = Resume Generating Event. i.e., I start hunting for a new job.

  24. Nancy*

    It’s fine. Lots of people have flexible hours to help with work-life balance, and most people do not pay attention to when emails come in or think that a 2am email needs an immediate answer.

  25. The Other Katie*

    As a freelancer I’m a big fan of scheduling my emails to arrive at a reasonable-for-me time. It helps to make sure I don’t forget to send emails if I happen to be working late or just think of something late, without setting an expectation that I am available all the time. It’s taken a long time to learn to set those boundaries, and it’s a good way to defend them.

  26. Good Enough For Government Work*

    It’s absolutely fine. I have ADHD, so sometimes I’ll either:
    – Log off early when I realise beating my brain into concentration isn’t going to work, then come back to it after dinner;

    – Simply realise I’ve forgotten something and hop on to send a quick email while I remember.

    Our scheduler doesn’t always activate, so while I will use that some of the time, sometimes you’ll just have to get it when you get it. I’m never expecting an immediate response!

  27. Daisy*

    Definitely depends on workplace culture. I got an email from a manager on another team I work with closely at 9:30 pm on Friday. I saw it on Saturday morning and waited until Monday morning to respond, because I know she’s not expecting me to answer her questions over the weekend. not sure why she was working that late on a Friday but I hope it’s because she flexed her time to take care of life stuff earlier in the week.

  28. Catabodua*

    I have a simple note at the bottom of my signature that reads along the lines of I work odd hours. please respond during your available work time.

    If people still want to police email times and/or judge me about it that’s on them.

  29. async*

    Email is asynchronous.
    I wish the people who say “schedule it” would spend their time persuading Microsoft to make schedule send easier in the webapp on my phone instead of talking about the message I am sending by replying when it’s convenient. (And I’m an IC anyway.)
    I know someone who goes further and shames people for sending emails on Friday afternoons if they are “too substantive” ?!

  30. Frosty*

    Sending a late email can be gauche if you think/know that the receiver has their phone set to receive emails and might get a push alert. That can cause them stress before they go to bed – regardless of the subject matter (if it’s not stressful as an email) because “oh my god WORK” just undoes all the relaxing they may have done in preparation for a good night sleep.

    Unless they need that information ASAP because you want to reschedule a meeting set for 8am and you’re going to no-show (for example) then schedule the email to send in the morning for the start of their working hours.

    1. Angstrom*

      This is where a manager should be explict about setting up phones with “do not disturb” for work emails outside expected work hours.
      My company has offices worldwide and emails often go to several time zones simultaneously.
      Scheduling sending email would be a nightmare. People are expected to manage their inbox notifications in a way that makes sense for their position.

      1. Frosty*

        It definitely has to do with office-norms and expectations, and if you have an already established relationship where you have a better idea of their work rhythms etc.

        Sometimes you’re emailing someone that you don’t know at all, or is outside your organization. I think it’s polite and respectful to take into consideration that your email might disrupt them and schedule-send. It’s so easy to do, it’s almost aggressively disrespectful not to do it.

        1. JulesF*

          If you don’t know them at all, then you don’t know their work hours. You can guess, but you can’t know. I disagree that sending someone an email that COULD cause an alert on their phone outside of their work hours is disrespectful – as long as it’s a rare occurrence.

      2. Nightengale*

        Thinking about the time my huge health system accidentally enrolled everyone into a mandatory training that sent out automated notices to this effect at 4 AM

        Which I sleep with my work cell phone because the answering service e-mails me if there is an actual patient emergency. I was not amused.

        It took some doing (I am pretty smartphone impaired) but I found a way to restrict push notifications ONLY to e-mails from the answering service.

        1. Alice*

          You say you are smartphone imaired but actually you have unlocked a level of smartphone mastery that most of the people in this thread have not! ;)

    2. Catabodua*

      It’s not my problem that the receiver doesn’t know how to silent their phone or push notifications.

      Whenever I make these comments I get flooded with I would have missed the call about my dad’s heart attack if I did that!!! Which completely misses the point that there is a difference between calls and emails….

      1. Dahlia*

        I kinda think maybe email isn’t the right way to find out about your dad’s heart attack…

        Personally I just have exceptions turned on for specific people in my DND settings.

  31. errrrr, uhhhh, duhhhh*

    there’s nothing weird about sending a late night email. there’s nothing wrong with just remembering something in the middle of the night and firing off a quick email as long as it’s your decision to do so. it’s weird to think it’s weird. schedule send is nice though, because if the recipient gets a ton of other emails you won’t get buried by all the overnight spam if you schedule it for start of business hours.

  32. bamcheeks*

    My current bafflement is WHY did I get an email inviting me to interview at 1:40am? Was someone working at that time? Was it automatically scheduled it for that time? Why? So baffled!

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      Wait, the INTERVIEW time was set for 1:40 am? thats really odd. I bet it was an automatic thing and they meant PM

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        I think bamcheeks meant the email sent with the interview invite was sent at 1:40am, not that the interview was for 1:40am.

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I appreciate all the other points people have raised about why they might be sending emails late at night, but I still can’t get my head around them in this case. An HR person should really understand the optics of emailing at 1:40am to someone who most likely has zero idea what the company culture is like!

  33. Sometimes maybe*

    Are the people who criticize late night emails the same that want more flexibility in their work? Because it seems like they’re saying you should have a good work/life balance as long as you do it exactly as I do. I, as do many I work with, work late nights or weekends so we can attend kid events or go to doctors appointments, or go golfing.

    1. Immaterial*

      yeah I feel like the ideal is just send the emails whenever you want and make sure people know they aren’t urgent or expected to work your same hours.

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I am and I do, but my definition of flexibility or work/life balance includes fewer hours and smaller workloads to allow for things like attending appointments / picking up kids / whatever else people flex their time for. While it might feel like “balance” to some people if they get to send emails from home after their kids go to bed, all I hear is that they have to take their work home with them and it interferes with the time they could spend with their kids / partner / pets / D&D guild / a good book / their favourite TV show / whatever. So for me, work/life balance and flexibility has to come with other things; getting to choose when to send my emails at home doesn’t feel like a perk to me.

      1. Kalidan*

        That sounds like caring a bit too much about how other people are handling things. If you’re not expected to alter your own work-life balance viz. sending/responding to emails outside normal working hours, what difference does it make if other people alter their own, for their reasons? It’s a pretty big leap to suggest they don’t have a good work-life balance just because they send an email outside of their normal working hours.

    3. another anoner*

      IME the people who are most vocal about using flexibility for their work/life balance are the ones most critical of other people sending emails outside of core hours. The critics usually aren’t the primary recipients of these emails or know much about the workflows of the people involved, but that doesn’t matter.

  34. Spicy Tuna*

    I’ve usually worked at companies / jobs where being up all night working or thinking about work is a positive.

    If OP’s husband is not in that kind of work environment, he can schedule send so it doesn’t slip his mind.

  35. Coalea*

    Personally I don’t see anything wrong with sending an email late at night/well outside your normal working hours, but if you’re concerned about sending a bad message about work/life balance, you could do what some of my colleagues do, which is to include in their email signature a blurb that basically says “I work flexibly; don’t worry about what time you receive this, and please respond during your own working hours.”

  36. Annie*

    For the last one, it’s a kindness to everyone to recommend another person who would be a good fit. A friend did that for me, and I got the job, which was a strong foundation for the rest of my career. Do it!

  37. Copyright Economist*

    When I’ve been away for a few days, I usually check my email on Sunday and clear out the spam and things which have already passed. I will sometimes reply to emails on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps some people think this is strange.

  38. Tradd*

    I occasionally will answer urgent emails outside of business hours, but only when I’m logged in for something else and see the email. I deal with many international customers who are 12-13 hours ahead of me. They work weekends, but I don’t want them to expect they’ll get answers outside of my regular work hours.

  39. Margaret Cavendish*

    If I think of something random at 11pm that requires me to send an email, I need to send that email at 11pm. Otherwise, I will go to bed and forget all about it, then get up and get started on my workday and never think of it again.

    I could send myself a reminder (9:30am, don’t forget to email Melissa about the meeting), but it’s an unnecessary extra step, when I could put the same information in the email and only send it once. Even scheduling it to send later feels like overkill – I assume Melissa is making her own decisions about what she reads and/or responds to at that hour of the night. Not that it’s hard, but it’s an extra step for me and no particular benefit to her, so why not just send the email as I’m thinking of it?

  40. Lizcase*

    I’ve been working author different timezones most of my career, and living in the land of Blackberry, we had “smart phones” early on too. I have never much paid attention to the time of an email – if it’s after my work hours, I just assume the other person is in a different timezone, or travelling, or is an insomniac, or something like that.
    In the case of a meeting response, I have definitely responded late at night for an early the next morning meeting, usually because I’m going to be logging into my computer just in time for the meeting and chances are the meeting scheduler is in Germany or India and would like to know I’m attending.

  41. Blue Pen*

    I might’ve side-eyed someone in another life or at another job, but in my current workplace (especially after the pandemic and implementing a hybrid work schedule) this doesn’t raise a single eyebrow. It would be weird if it did, to be honest. Our workplace is very flexible, so if someone is emailing outside normal work hours (which happens very often), and so long as the receiver knows that an immediate response or action isn’t expected, it’s totally fine.

  42. girlie_pop*

    I wouldn’t really think too much if I got a Slack message or email from someone timestamped late at night, especially if it was of the “Hey just wanted to send this before I forgot about it” variety. That being said, the few times I’ve done that in the past, I just scheduled the email or message to go out first thing in the morning. I have some colleagues who I know keep their Slack and email notifications on all the time and don’t heed “Don’t do anything about this until tomorrow” messages, and I do not want to ping them and give them a reason to log on.

  43. Three Owls in a Trench Coat*

    #2—I would go above the organizer now rather than later. The LW already asked for consideration and was ignored. It’s reasonable to expect work lunches to be at places that won’t kill you with accidental cross-contamination. The hassle of planning ahead and reserving a table or room is nothing compared to an ER visit. Offer to help research and identify more places that are convenient and safe. Or gather menus for places that deliver (and consider having 2 places deliver for a lunch to make sure everyone can eat).

    Impromptu or scheduled, it’s not okay to consistently and frequently exclude a team member. This site has discussed this plenty of times – camping trips, golf outings, team-building obstacle courses, etc.

  44. Grimalkin*

    Curious how others in fields where there’s a clear divisions between coworkers and customers/clients feel about this.
    I work in the legal field, and I’ll send emails to my coworkers whenever, but I try to only email clients during the 9-5 work hours or thereabouts unless it’s an emergency. My thinking is that if I regularly send emails to clients later in the evening, they’ll learn to expect such responses from not only myself but the rest of the firm during those hours, and that becomes a problem when they’re reaching out to coworkers who aren’t self-proclaimed night owls like I am.
    (Opposing counsel… Mostly I try to avoiding sending emails to them too long after 5 PM also, but for a different reason. There, it’s to avoid any squabbles about whether that still counts as receiving something “that day” or whether responses should be granted an extra day’s time because it was sent after some places’ EOD.)

    2. Anonymoose*

      I was told exactly this when I worked at a school. Never email or call parents outside of school hours as then they might expect staff and teachers to be working outside of school hours and get angry when they didn’t get a reply to something late at night when no one was working

  45. Justin D*

    I think recommending someone for a job you don’t want is fine as long as the reason why you turned it down is only because of actual work fit. Like your skills or expertise don’t match as well as you thought. Anything else might burn your colleague.

  46. Delta Delta*

    I used to work for a bad boss who sent emails at all hours and on the weekends. Honestly, I would get physically ill when I’d see that I had an email from him off hours, because they generally demanded responses.

    I don’t work there anymore.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      This was my former boss, as well. Only it was text messages.

      And this is where manager expectations come into play. I don’t mind a manager who does if they don’t expect me to respond outside of regular business hours.

  47. grandma Cassie’s lady slippers*

    I have an auto response on my email that goes on at 5 pm and off at 8 am.

    It says that my office hours are 8 am -5 pm and I will respond to their email during those hours.

    The senders can send email at any time they choose and will be “reminded” that I will respond during my work hours.

  48. SendWhateverWhenever*

    I don’t understand why sending email at whatever o’clock matters. If I’m up and working then what’s the big deal. No one is forcing anyone to read something at 11pm of 2am or whenever. It’s an asynchronous form of communication.

  49. CubeFarmer*

    I’ll write the email, but then put it in my drafts folder until business hours. I worry that sending emails at odd hours makes it look like I can’t manage my time.

  50. Mostly Managing*

    I’m in the role I’m in, because a friend didn’t want it and told them to keep an eye out for my application.
    My oldest kid is in his role because a friend was asked to pinch-hit one day, couldn’t, and recommended him (now he’s permanent).
    My next kid is in their role because a friend was offered multiple positions and told the place that had an internal issue and took too long to make an offer to “take a look at my friend – they missed your first round of applications because they were still at uni, but they’d be great!”
    My husband is in his role because a friend gave him a heads up that there would be a position opening, and put in a good word with the hiring manager.

    I guess what I’m saying is that if referring a friend was somehow wrong, my whole family might be unemployed… :)

  51. Ess Ess*

    It’s pretty normal to go ahead and send the email after hours when it is just information being passed along. This way it is ready for them when they log in the next day. Sending emails while expecting answers right away would make it wrong, but people work all sorts of hours that work best for themselves so no one in my company would blink if an informational email was sent during the night.

  52. pcake*

    I think part of the problem is the use of the word “comfortable”.

    “Thet said they understood why I wasn’t comfortable there but that the restaurant worked well because of the reasons mentioned above.”

    You’re not uncomfortable, you have a medical reason not to go to that restaurant. And I’d like to point out that some allergies can change or get worse, so it can be more of a problem than you’re giving it credit for.

  53. DJ*

    A good way stop colleagues from feeling they need to respond at an hours time is to add a footer suggested by this site (scroll down to Emails outside of normal working hours) https://ncas.ac.uk/for-staff/email-signatures
    In Australia conservatives are flapping their gums over new right to disconnect laws. But it doesn’t stops ppl from SENDING emails but means receivers aren’t expected to read or respond to them in most situations. Surveys were showing over 50% of workers were being expected to respond after hours weekly or more!

  54. Bruce*

    The sun never sets on my company, so we are pretty used to getting emails at all hours of the night. We also use Teams, and sometimes people in other time zones forget about the difference and call or send messages late at night that cause “alerts”… so I’ve been careful to turn on the “do not disturb” features for late at night!

  55. KB*

    I’m so sad about not being able to read Inc articles anymore now that Inc redirects to the Australian site, which understandably doesn’t use the same links.

    1. WS*

      Other people posted about this last week, and you can find it on the Australian site, but you have to go to the site, search for “Alison Green” and then find it in the list of results. Which is very annoying and I hope Inc fixes it soon!

    2. Brev*

      I know right?! It’s really frustrating they’ve done that.

      VPN works around it but you have to want and get a VPN that lets you set the country.

  56. Matt*

    I still insist on email being an asynchronous medium. Just like your house’s mailbox. You don’t care about when the mailman comes, the mailman and the senders of your letters don’t care when you get home and check it. I know the culture around this has been changing, but I don’t want to actively support this – it’s enough that the culture is more and more IM and less email where much quicker responses are expected, so it’s kind of a backlash to the positive trend of using more email and less phone calls.

  57. Brev*

    Regardless of the rest of the context, I am obsessed with the “sometimes” answer. That’s brilliant.

    It’s not only hilarious, it’s also so much better than “no”, which can end up in an awkward convo gender or segue way. With the right tone, any person who says that is immediately on the favourite co-worker lists.

  58. Kristi Wachter*

    I’m a freelancer, and one of my manager/colleagues has a great line in her signature file:

    “Please Note: My working hours may not coincide with yours. Please respond during your working hours. Thank you.”

    That lets her reply when it’s convenient for her while making it clear that she doesn’t expect others to be working the same hours. It’s great.

  59. Swedish Engineer*

    Regarding the late emails, I’m surprised no-one has mentioned that in several countries in Europe managers are not allowed to contact their employees outside of working hours. France is one of them.

    “In France, if you’re a company of 50 employees or more, you cannot email an employee after typical work hours. The labor law amendment has come about because studies show that in the digital age, it’s increasingly difficult for people to distance themselves from the workplace during their off hours.

    This new provision allows people to get the full advantage of their time off.”

    1. DJ*

      In Aust you’re allowed to send emails but in most cases not expect a response or it to be actioned after normal working hours. So stops employees feeling they can’t organise social/life things in case they get interrupted to do work!

  60. AppleStan*

    My job is a 50 – 60 hour per week job (exempt from overtime). Some of my direct reports are also 50 – 60 hours per week (exempt from overtime), and some are 40 hours per week (not exempt from overtime — although sometimes they do flex and work outside of their regular schedule).

    My signature block in my email has: “P.S. My work hours may look different than your work hours. Please do not feel obligated to respond outside of your normal working hours.”

    I also make it crystal clear to EVERYONE on my team that they might sometimes see emails dated at 6pm, 9pm, 12am, 2am, etc. I do NOT expect NOR DO I WANT them be tied to their phones / computers 24/7 (heck, it’s my insomnia, they shouldn’t have to suffer for it)…that they are only to respond to my emails during their working hours.

    So far, it’s worked great!

  61. Emma*

    I work later hours than my employee, so I’ve simply told her that if she gets an email from me after hours, to treat it as though I just want her to see it when she comes in. If anything is truly urgent – which is quite rare, like once or twice a year rare – I’ll text her. I’ve had the “schedule email” function fail me more than once, so that’s why I don’t use that option.

  62. Inkognyto*

    I just don’t, won’t anymore. I have in the past, and I found out yeah not worth it.

    Others can if they desire, and I generally think in the US we work way too much, too long and keep giving that time away when we shouldn’t.

    Very good chance person is not going to see the email before they get in, and everyone is not going to accept the meeting at 11pm. If it was really needed that badly the person would have prompted again before they ended their workday. They didn’t, so it’s not critical.

    I work my schedule and logoff. My job is great, but anything I didn’t get done will be there tomorrow. There’s no work email on my personal phone and there never will be. If work requires me to have email off hours they will pay me to respond and watch it because I’ll be working on on-call. And they provide the means in which to respond, be it a phone or another device.

    This is one concept my current boss has pushed on me:
    When you are done with work, you are done. Don’t think about it, don’t email etc.
    You achieved something today, take the win and do more tomorrow, there’s always more to do tomorrow. It’s fine to leave stuff for that later, even if you didn’t get it all done and you said you would. It’s common, we are not machines. Don’t stress about it, as life has enough stress to constantly worry about work when not being paid.

    That concept right there is why I work for this person. I stressed about stuff not being done off hrs, and not getting done each day. They took over the dept and we had a good talk about it expectations.

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