One of my editors has a grudge she’s been nursing for years, and I’ve decided it is my journalistic duty to air it. It was Christmas morning. She was in her pajamas, surrounded by her family and wrapping paper, doing exactly what a person should be doing on Christmas morning, which is nothing. Then her phone buzzed. Naturally, she assumed it was a relative with holiday wishes.
It was her CEO. On Teams. With a question.
Oh, it wasn’t an emergency, like “the building is on fire and you alone know where we keep the extinguisher.” It was just a regular question—the kind that could have waited until January, or frankly, until the heat death of the universe. And her first thought was not: What a flexible, modern leader! Her first thought was: Am I in trouble? On Christmas?!
She is still not over it. And when she told me this story, I nodded sympathetically, made an appropriately outraged noise and then had a small internal crisis. Because reader, I am the villain of this story. Not that specific story—I’ve never Teams-bombed anyone’s Christmas—but I am a person who sends work emails at 10:47 p.m. with the serenity of someone who has never once considered the recipient’s nervous system.
My defense, which I have never had to say out loud until now, is this: Email is asynchronous communication. That’s its whole personality. That’s why we like it. So I assume that if you’re not ready to look at your inbox, you simply won’t look at it. And if something were actually on fire, I’d never email—I’d text or call or send a carrier pigeon.
I’m going to give this defense a name, because I’ve been using it for 20 years and so has everyone I know: the async alibi. It’s the belief that because a message can wait, it does wait—and that whatever happens in the recipient’s evening is therefore none of your business. It sounds airtight. It’s the most reasonable thing I’ve ever believed. It’s also, I’ve come to accept, mostly nonsense.
This etiquette question is trickier than I first thought. Let’s get into it.
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The case for sending a message whenever you want
I will propose that “work hours” stopped being a shared reality some time ago. If you’re a caregiver who does real thinking after bedtime, or you’re in Denver, like me, emailing a team in Dublin, or your brain simply boots up at 9 p.m., then “after hours” is just … hours. Plus, I often work on East Coast time (because everything in media is in New York or L.A.), which means that my very early 6 a.m. email hits my New York City editor’s inbox at a reasonable 8 a.m. her time. Let’s not talk about what my 6 a.m. email does to my West Coast editor.
Microsoft’s own data suggests this isn’t a fringe lifestyle. In its 2025 analysis of Microsoft 365 activity, the company found that by 10 p.m., nearly 29% of active workers are back in their inboxes, and 40% of the people online at 6 a.m. are already reviewing email. Meetings starting after 8 p.m. rose 16% year over year. More interesting: Microsoft Research found that remote workers often experience evening hours as a productive window for quiet catch-up, while hybrid workers are more likely to find those same hours stressful. Same clock. Completely different feelings about it.
(Do I think this says good things about our health as a society? No, it’s a problem—but solving work-life balance will have to wait for its own etiquette column, along with sourcing the Big Bang and understanding why my grandma sent me underwear from garage sales as a gift. ~Life’s mysteries~)
I would like to emphasize, as both an email user and a former college professor of IT, that nothing about an email demands immediacy. It was designed that way. If a message required your attention right now, it would be a phone call. The recipient has options—notifications off, badge hidden, phone in a drawer, phone in the ocean. Somewhere in the long list of email etiquette rules we’ve all silently agreed to, there’s a part about the reader having some responsibility too.
And it turns out that readers are probably more stressed than the situation calls for. Researchers at London Business School and Cornell identified something they call the “email urgency bias.” Across eight preregistered studies with more than 4,000 participants, they found that receivers consistently overestimate how quickly senders expect a response to non-urgent emails sent outside normal work hours. So the poor co-worker spiraling over my 10:47 p.m. message is spiraling about a deadline I never set. (Also, I’ve never been anyone’s boss.) Vindication!
Well. Sort of.
The case for keeping your thumbs to yourself
However, that same research found the bias was linked to genuine stress and lower well-being. “They’re overreacting” is a weak defense when you’re the one who handed them the thing to overreact to. No, I didn’t set a deadline, but I still installed one in someone’s head and went to bed.
There’s older research backing this up too. A foundational study out of Lehigh, Virginia Tech and Colorado State found that it isn’t the time spent on after-hours email that wears people down—it’s the expectation of it, which creates what the researchers call anticipatory stress. Even when no emails actually arrive, they found that the mere norm of availability keeps people from mentally clocking out. So the damage isn’t done by my one Saturday email. It’s done by my one Saturday email teaching everyone that Saturday emails happen here.
And now here’s the part where my whole theory falls apart, which I would like the record to show I discovered myself, thank you.
When one of my editors emails me at 9 p.m., I look. Every time. Not because I plan to work—I just need to know whether it’s urgent. Which means the entire “they simply won’t check it” premise I’ve been running on for years describes exactly nobody, including me. Here’s the rub: You can decline to respond. You cannot decline to know. And knowing is the part that ruins the movie you were watching.
Some countries have decided this isn’t a personal quirk at all. Australia’s right-to-disconnect law took effect in August 2024 and expanded to small businesses in August 2025, giving employees the right to refuse to monitor, read or reply to contact outside their working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable. Notably, it doesn’t make after-hours contact illegal. It just makes ignoring you legal—which is either reassuring or humbling, depending on how much you enjoy being answered.
What actually decides it
Whether a night or weekend email is rude almost never depends on the clock. Almost all of this debate comes down to three things: who you are to the person, what you’re asking and what business you’re in.
Your position
Peer to peer, a night email is a nonevent. From a boss to a direct report, it isn’t an email—it’s a norm with a subject line. This is why I’ve been grading myself on a generous curve: because I’m nobody’s boss. My async theory works beautifully for me, and yet it would be actively harmful in the hands of someone who signs paychecks. If you have authority over anyone’s schedule, salary or performance review, you don’t get to say “I’m just working when I work.” You’re setting the office standards, whether you mean to or not.
And I can tell you from personal experience that emailing a freelancer or contractor is its own trap: You’ve purchased a deliverable, not a Friday night. When you’re emailing someone at another company entirely, you have no idea what their culture demands. Be conservative. You’re a guest in a workplace whose rules you’ve never read.
The topic
A question is fine. A task is pushy. Criticism is a crime. Anything on a major holiday is a hard no. Nobody in recorded history has read “Can we talk tomorrow?” at 10 p.m. and then slept peacefully. And if it’s genuinely urgent, don’t email at all—text or call. Email is a terrible tool for emergencies, which is what made that Christmas Teams ping so absurd. If it wasn’t worth a phone call, then it wasn’t worth the interruption.
Your field
For fields like media, hospitality, health care, live events, politics or anything with a “breaking” tag, night isn’t after hours—night is the job. For some fields, this may depend on the season (accounting in April, right before tax day, is not the same as accounting in July), but know that “we’re all hustling” describes a season, not a permanent license. Know the culture of your field and your particular company.
And no, the sunrise workaround doesn’t save you. A 6 a.m. email is a 6 a.m. email. Sending at dawn instead of midnight doesn’t make you considerate; it makes you someone who decided other people’s mornings were a softer target.
The fixes are embarrassingly easy
“Schedule send” exists. The solution is right there. It’s been right there for years, waiting patiently for us to notice it, like a golden retriever.
And if you can’t be bothered—hi, it’s me—then just add: “No response needed until Monday.” The urgency-bias researchers found that one small clarifying note from the sender about response expectations meaningfully reduced the anxiety. Just don’t write “No rush!” and then follow up at 8 a.m. on Sunday, because now you’re not merely rude, you’re a liar.
Also, set an actual out-of-office message when you’re actually off, and make it a funny one, since it’s the last impression you’ll leave for a week.
So … is it really rude?
Sending a work email at night or on the weekend is not rude. Sending it badly is.
Rude is sending it with an implied deadline, sending it to someone who can’t afford to ignore you, or sending criticism at 11 p.m. and then sleeping soundly. Rude is having a schedule-send button and refusing to press it because, deep down, you’d like a little credit for the time stamp. Meanwhile, your co-worker is staring at the ceiling trying not to spiral.
However, as an email receiver, you should take responsibility for your time. It is OK to draw boundaries with work and let everyone know you won’t be checking email between certain hours.
So the onus is shared—but it isn’t split evenly. The recipient owes you nothing until Monday. The sender owes them one sentence of clarity. And whoever has more power owes more, which is the entire reason a CEO’s Christmas morning “quick question” is a war crime and my 10:47 p.m. story pitch is just a Tuesday.
I’m still going to send them. The async alibi isn’t wrong, exactly—it’s just incomplete, and one sentence completes it. “No response needed until Monday” is the thing that turns an alibi into an actual courtesy, and it costs four words. I’ve seen what my inbox does to me at 9 p.m., and it turns out the ceiling-starer was me all along.
Why trust us
Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of etiquette stories that help readers navigate communication in a changing world. We regularly cover topics such as the best messages to send for any occasion, polite habits that aren’t as polite as they seem, email and texting etiquette, business etiquette, tipping etiquette, travel etiquette and more. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Microsoft WorkLab, Work Trend Index Special Report: “Breaking down the infinite workday”
- Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: “You don’t need to answer right away! Receivers overestimate how quickly senders expect responses to non-urgent work emails”
- Cornell Chronicle: “Set expectations to reduce email stress”
- Virginia Tech News: “Expectations for employees to check email after hours can cause burnout, new study finds”
- Australian Government, Fair Work Ombudsman: “Right to disconnect”
- Australian Government, Fair Work Ombudsman: “Small business employees now have the right to disconnect”
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