Don’t ever use this word in an email to me: Fran Whiting on her new pet hate

There’s just so much to be annoyed about these days and I’d like to share a whole list of my pet hates with you, writes Fran Whiting.

Fran Whiting has a new pet hate.

I have a new pet hate. Oh, I know, judging by your letters, you read this column and you think what a reasonable and level-headed woman I am. And sometimes I am those things.

But the rest of time, I am just as much of a seething mass of bitter resentment, simmering anger and passive aggression as the rest of you.

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Look, we can’t help it, can we? There’s just so much to be annoyed about.

I have a whole list of pet hates, including people who say, “Don’t take this personally …” at the start of a sentence, signalling that I’m about to take it very, very personally; people who write ambiguous posts on social media like, “Something crazy just happened to me … don’t ask!” so we all have to ask, people who say “anything” instead of “anything”, and people who are Donald Trump.

I am also very capable of being annoying – just ask my husband, children, friends and co-workers, but mostly my husband.

I am, for example, a fairly regular sender of emails that say: “Hi! Hope you’re well! Just wondering if you got my last email? You haven’t replied, so I’m just making sure it hasn’t gone missing!”

Now, they know and I know that I don’t hope they’re well, it has not gone missing, I am feigning concern as to its whereabouts and I am overusing exclamation marks to appear friendly.

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

Anyway, I received an email the other day that ended with a word that has now become a new pet hate of mine, should it appear at the end of an email, text or meeting.

That word is this. Thoughts. Followed by a question mark: Thoughts?

You want to know what my thoughts are when I read this at the end of an email or text? My thoughts are that you don’t have any. You do not have any ideas or solutions yourself, are panicking and you are trying to pass on the problem to me.

Also, if I do tell you my thoughts on this, you will, in turn, pass them off as your own. Either that, or you know that I should have had an answer to this problem by now, and I don’t. By writing, “Thoughts?” at the end of your email, you are passively aggressively asking me why I haven’t produced any yet.

In a meeting situation, I have noticed this word has started to appear regularly and, as the young people would say, it hits different.

And yes, I know that’s not correct grammar but that is how they say it.

Anyway, when I sit in a long meeting and someone turns to me and says, “Thoughts?” I immediately panic, because I have tuned out long, long ago, and while I may physically still be in the room, I have travelled out of my body to Noosa and am currently enjoying a cocktail at sunset.

And if I really told you my thoughts at that moment, they could honestly be anything. “Will the RBA keep the interest rate stable?” “Is Benedict Cumberbatch really the thinking woman’s crumpet?” “Gosh, I’d like a crumpet now though, with lots of butter.” “I wonder which Spice Girl I’d be?”

And, as I have noticed this particular word has been creeping into both written and spoken language more frequently, I wonder if you have too.

Thoughts?