A request:

"Hello, John! How are you today? Listen, if you have 15 minutes today - could you please do something for me? I need you to compare the results of test runs 1111 and 2222. Thank you!"

- How normal people read it:
* reads every word*
a grammar nazi takes a few minutes to look up whether the dash was the right symbol to use in this context.
appreciates the politeness
appreciates the personal touch (John, How are you)

- How a programmer reads it
".*compare\s.*(test|run).*\s(\\d{2,}).*\s(\\d{2,})\s*.*"

I would post this post as a joke/meme if it were one. Unfortunately, this is usually the case and devs, like regexes, sometimes tend to miss some important detail in the .* part.

wait some devs filter their own email with regex? that's genius

What’s the important part?

It’s someone grossly underestimating the amount of work required while piling it on your plate, and very obviously pretending to be nice about it so maybe you still like them. And it’s a hook: if you take too long, you’re at fault because this clearly states it should only take 15 minutes. The niceness also bars any replies that aren’t also overly friendly as then you are the aggressor and again at fault.

While none of this was overtly intentional, it is still true nevertheless, and an irritated or pissy boss would absolutely use it against you.

Source: several bosses who did exactly this, nearly every week.

The “thank you” at the end sounds sincere enough. That part was nice.

Also, that’s the wrong dash 😉

@Root grammar nazi! [I guess it should've been a comma? Or nothing at all? We haven't been taught this part of the language - I'm usually using the rules used in my native lang :)]

idk, these THANK YOU always sound in my head as "please and thank you". Like I have no choice to not do that, because I've already been thanked for it. Maybe the person does indeed mean to be polite. Maybe. I'd see it polite/sincere if the person thanked me after committing to or at least ack'ing the request.

This politeness somehow seems...Pushy. "Hey Milton, whaaat's happening; if you could just get that report ready for me by the eod, that would be greeeaaat. Thank you." [if you get the ref.]

@netikras in this situation, the "correct" dash is the em dash ("—"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash