RUT?

Like many parents, I used to cluck disapprovingly when I saw the silly short forms and tangled syntax used by my kids as they chatted with their friends.  "What a waste of time!" I thought. But I never hassled them about it because I knew there were much worse things that they could have been doing on the Internet.  And besides, if they didn't have chat they'd be tying up my phone line or running up their cell phone bills.

I had zero (0) interest in using chat for myself.  After all, grown ups communicate in full sentences and we try to get our spelling and grammar correct.  (With varying degrees of success, as any reader of this blog can attest).

Email is a much more refined method of communication; it is both fast and thoughtful.  I've been using it for many years, even in prehistoric times when the corporate email system ran on an IBM mainframe.  I am no Luddite pining for the days of typed memoranda* and carbon paper.  I was quite happy when all of that stuff moved into the electronic age.

But chat was for kids.  It was easy to avoid; every company I worked for forbade the use of chat anyway.

I recently joined a company that not only allows chat, it encourages you to use it to talk to co-workers.  At first I ignored it, figuring that the only reason they allowed chat was to allow  the under-30 crowd to coordinate their lunch plans.  Or perhaps to save money on phone expenses for its geographically dispersed work force.

What I didn't realize is how productive chat can be when you are closely collaborating with others on a complex task.  Chat eliminates a lot of phone calls and greatly reduces the amount of shouting over cubicle walls in the office.  And, if you can't remember what somebody said 10 minutes ago, you can look it up.

Call me a convert.  (It's okay, I've been called far worse).

* This word is so outdated that my spell checker flags it as an error.