this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You don’t know- maybe the boss has trouble reading people and legitimately wants to know if their tone is appropriate from the employee’s perspective?

Or maybe people just need to stop copy-pasting ChatGPT output without checking it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not that fucking hard to write a couple words.

Why the need for a paragraph. Most people being sick don't want to read all them words.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

>35 words

>average reading speed is about 200 wpm

>approximately 10.5 seconds of reading

>all them words

Profound laziness and inattention like this is exactly the type of attitude that makes people think LLM slop is acceptable. We are so fucking cooked; holy shit. Concision might be better in this specific case, but act like an adult.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Most people being sick don’t want to read all them words.

People can be as lazy as they fucking want to be when they are sick. You know, feeling shitty enough that they aren't able to work?

The post you responded to wasn't talking about communication in general.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Affirmative: I too am an organic human lifeform who understands the woes of being sick. beep boop And to that I say: Literally. Ten. Seconds. Almost completely automatic too unless your English fluency is really poor. Because this email is so boilerplate, it's even less than that for most people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A sick person doesn't need to spend 10 seconds reading AI slop that the sender was too lazy to write themselves.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We both agree the AI slop is bad. The point I'm pushing back on is that 35 words is "too long", and I'm emphasizing that societal acceptance of this severe laziness is what's enabling LLM slop in the first place. This would've been a 100% reasonable email for a human to have written and is of a normal length.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (3 children)

ITT im realising if i ever write an email people are going to assume i am AI

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I guess I don’t have a problem with this.
I struggle to write emails and would potentially use an LLM if that were an option. (Maybe.)

The message accepted the request, and was polite, showing concern, even. I assume it was proofread and deemed acceptable to the boss/reflective of their sentiments (although perhaps not copied well).

I guess I don’t see the offense here. Anyone who does see it care to explain why this is a negative?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's probably offensive because that AI footer text was copied into the email, letting the (sick) recipient know it was AI-generated, not genuinely from the sender.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Should I be offended that my boss uses the same copy paste message on everyone?

I think it's based lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My personal POV is that as an employee in I'm notifying the manager, not asking for approval. As a manager, I only care that the employee is within the number of days they are allowed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sounds like youre one of the few good ones. Most managers care more about power tripping

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

Many in middle management end up drunk on what little power they have. It's utterly rampant in the retail and food service.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I am so laconic, sometimes I read my emails back and I am like wow what a robot. So I get humaning it up with a fake human.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Using an LLM is less of an issue than how it was used. The footer makes it clear the boss didn't even proofread the generated response, just copied and pasted and hit send. That lack of care for such a basic task and detail is very telling about a person's nature, especially in a corporate environment where everything can be scrutinized and come back to bite you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Perhaps my understanding of how these are used is incorrect.

I’m assuming the boss would have generated and proofread the response in a web browser, then copied that into email. Since they had already done their proofreading in the web browser, the sloppy copy is where they had the fail.
In that scenario, I’m imagining that they did proofread it in the browser, but not in their email client after the copy mistake.

Hm. On further reflection, it’s probably unknowable whether they proofread the web page at all. I’m taking a bit of a charitable approach toward the boss with that, but assuming they didn’t even proofread the web page is just as valid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah exactly, I can't say whether they looked over it before or just did a bad job copying, but there was still an opportunity to fix it after that.

From my perspective, regardless of what goes into a work email, I'm giving it one last look over before I actually hit the send button

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah I find that LLMs are good for producing things when I'm unable to properly choose the right words.

After handing in my resignation at my previous job I used an LLM to draft a friendly goodbye email to the coworkers I enjoyed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah my neurodivergent brain sometimes can't string together a normal sentence for the life of me and it's a stupid thing to get stuck on. Hail LLM's (somewhat)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I string together way too many words, edit them, add more words, edit them, add more words, get frustrated with myself, edit the thing, then send it off in a huff and realize I accidentally a word or failed to connect two concepts that were clearly connected at some point, but now my whole email is a conceptual and linguistic mess just like this sentence.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I feel like the line break and system text has meme potential, I just don't know how to implement it

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I want the most formal paid leave available, boss. Lol

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

My boss literally has a copy and paste message that he sends like this when you email in sick lol

It doesn't even matter because half the time the person ain't even sick including when he calls in sick

Edit: also I would honestly hate if my boss personally responded and wished me well, unless I was actually confirmed dying it's just sort of weird to me. A simple "OK" reply is the perfect one

Edit 2: and if you're that weird coworker who sends wish me well emails please stop doing that it's the opposite of helpful

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No replies. Two edits. I wish you well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Two within short span, i am bad about thinking about something else i wanted to add sometimes

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Eh, at least they’re trying. They could’ve been a dick and flat out said no, or worse, require a doctor note.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It's illegal in my state to require a doctor's note.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

What was the prompt? Asking for chatgpt to say "Okay"?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

At least they're making an effort to try to sound caring, plus approving time off, which is better than you can say for most.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Sure thing! I can create a reply to "this fucking jackass asking for time off." Here you go! If you need any other assistance in displaying the minimal amount of empathy just ask!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Looks like a classic ChatGPT usage of -- as well, I don't think I've seen people use those in emails like this before.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I wonder if they figured out a way to use Copilot to auto respond to emails containing certain terms. Could save them a few minutes but you'd imagine it would be useful for them to know who was out that day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
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