Funnily enough, at my last company they actively promoted/encouraged these "polite" openers as part of IM etiquette. The most popular was simply "IM?" i.e. are

Funnily enough, at my last company they actively promoted/encouraged these "polite" openers as part of IM etiquette. The most popular was simply "IM?" i.e. are you ready/available/etc. to engage in "instant"[0] messaging with me? I felt like just saying "no" plenty of times, but that seems too rude, so the most I would ever say besides "yes" was something like "give me 60 sec" or "give me 5 min." Sometimes you gotta finish shit and get to a stopping point or it's just an infinitely recursive interruption stack. [0] Not really instant, because "So-and-so is typing," and your productivity is hostage to their typing skills.