A woman has sparked debate over whether or not it was rude to send emails late at night after she was reprimanded for contacting a baking company outside of normal working hours.

Speaking to UK parenting platform Mumsnet, the shocked customer explained that the people behind the company had reprimanded her for emailing them at 2am.

However, the woman claimed she didn’t expect the person to respond at that time, and she only emailed then so she wouldn’t forget.

Many were on the woman’s side, saying the business owner was being unreasonable and should turn off her notifications if she doesn’t want to be bothered.

Still others in the comments section said it would annoy them to receive an email at that time because they can easily be scheduled for the next morning.

A woman sparked a discussion over whether it was rude to send emails late at night after being reprimanded for contacting a baking company outside of normal working hours (file photo )

The message read: “Is it rude to email a company late at night? Just to clarify, I’m not talking about WhatsApp, SMS or anything. A real email.

“I got up at 2 a.m., remembered something and sent an email. Something along the lines of “just to confirm that the birthday cake we ordered has chocolate frosting but is a vanilla cake”.

“I just wanted to be clear because in the past with a different bakery we had verbally said ‘chocolate frosting, vanilla cake,’ but we ended up just getting chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

“While picking up the cake, we said to my sister “and besides, I don’t like receiving emails at all hours of the night”.

“Surely you turn off email notifications on your phone if you don’t want to be disturbed… AIBU for sending emails late at night?

One person replied: “Not at all, isn’t that the great thing about email?” Texting/WhatsApping at this time would be rude, but I would expect people to only check their emails when they are working or able to respond.

Another agreed, saying, “No, I send emails late quite often because that’s when I have time. I don’t expect a response immediately. Looks like the bakery was really shit.

Someone else added: “No. What would be unreasonable is to get annoyed by a lack of response.

Speaking to UK parenting platform Mumsnet, the shocked customer explained that the people behind the company had reprimanded her for emailing them at 2am.

Many were on the women’s side, saying the business owner was being unreasonable and should turn off her notifications if she doesn’t want to be bothered.

“The business owner here is unreasonable. I think email is less intrusive than other forms of messaging because you can actively choose when to check them. And as you say, turn off any notifications you don’t want to receive!

“You can’t dictate when your clients are allowed to write to you: many people will send emails outside of office hours because they themselves are at work during office hours! »

A fourth added: “Well if I ran my own business I wouldn’t let work emails or WhatsApps bother me outside of working hours. If this person isn’t smart enough to manage their notifications, it’s their fault.

However, some insisted that it would also annoy them if they received work emails outside of working hours.

One person said: “It kind of pisses me off if I get work emails at this time, even though I would never talk about it like that to a client.”

“But it’s easy to use scheduled sending, so if someone chose not to, I think it’s a bit rude, given that these days emails often arrive immediately on our phones, just like text messages.”

Meanwhile, others said it would also annoy them if they received work emails outside of work hours.

“I don’t turn off my phone at night because I use it for my morning wake-up call, and I don’t want to miss any emergency calls by turning it on Do Not Disturb.

“It’s a bit of a hassle to turn email notifications off and on every day, so I just get a few late-night emails. But I’ll never be rude to them.

Another said: ‘Elderly parents might mean she turned the phone on during the night and so heard an email coming in and opened the phone to see what it was.

“Newsflash, not everyone uses all the features on their phone to set different levels of notifications overnight.”

Someone else said: “I actually think it’s rude to send work emails on weekends or at night.” I would definitely never say that to a client. When I work after hours, I schedule emails to go out the next morning.