Got a Sec and My Brain Drafts a Resignation

My boss messaged me "hey, got a sec?" at 4:52 on a Friday. No context. Then nothing for forty minutes. By the time they called, I had rewritten my resignation letter in my head and replayed every meeting from the past month. It was about the parking lot. How do I stop doing this to myself every time someone sends me "got a sec?"

Dreading Got A Sec Pings,
Spiraling in the Parking Lot

You’re not doing it to yourself. Somebody did it to you. Let’s get the blame pointed in the right direction before we fix anything.

“Hey, got a sec?” is not a question. It’s a cliffhanger written by someone who isn’t going to watch the next episode. They typed four words, hit send, and went to get a coffee. You got forty minutes of your entire career flashing before your eyes. They handed you all of their anxiety and kept none of it for themselves.

There was a time when a manager who needed you walked over to your desk and said the thing. “Parking lot’s getting repaved Monday. Park on the street.” Done. Eleven seconds. Nobody needed a cardiologist. Somewhere along the way we invented a way to tap somebody on the shoulder from across the building and then disappear, and we called it communication.

Here’s the part you won’t like. Your brain isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do. An unexplained summons from the person who signs off on your paycheck, at 4:52 on a Friday, is a threat signal. The spiral is a reasonable response to an unreasonable message. Stop beating yourself up for it. You were set up.

Now here’s what you do. Every single time, you answer “got a sec?” with “Sure. What’s it about?” Every time. Forever. Polite, short, and it puts the work back where it belongs. They want your attention, they can spend one more sentence buying it. Most of them will cough it up immediately, because most of the time it really is about the parking lot. And the rest? The rest you want to know about before you walk into the room, not after.

And for the love of everything holy, never send it yourself. Not to your team, not to your spouse, not to your kid. If you need something from someone, put the thing in the message. The whole thing. The point first.

Because “got a sec?” isn’t a question about time. It’s a question about power. And the answer, from now on, is “depends on what it’s about.”

– Uncle Bobby