My fourth story in this series is about Anya, who creates rules for surviving professional chat in a multicultural remote team. Her careful manual helps her navigate cultural differences, but it takes a mistake to teach her that authenticity matters more than perfect performance.
This emerged from my own experience working across time zones and cultures, where every message requires translation between professional norms and communication styles.
Anya’s screen glowed in the dim morning light as she scrolled through her self-made “Chat Survival Manual.” As a remote marketing assistant on a multicultural team, she had compiled this list of do’s and don’ts during her first anxious weeks on the job. What began as jotted notes had evolved into a tidy document pinned beside her laptop. She reviewed a few key entries before the daily video call:
- Rule 3: Always start messages with a friendly greeting (“Hi, hope you’re doing well!”) to soften the tone.
- Rule 5: Avoid sarcasm or dry humor — it may not translate across cultures.
- Rule 7: Use emojis and exclamation marks to sound positive! (But never use 😉 winks with the boss.)
- Rule 9: If you don’t understand something, quietly research it; don’t expose ignorance in group chat.
These guidelines were Anya’s safety net. Working from her small flat in St. Petersburg, she often felt oceans away from her team, and each rule was born from a minor mishap. Rule 7 existed because on day one she’d replied to a manager’s joke with a curt “Noted.” (Without a smiley, it had come off as unfriendly.) And the ill-advised winking emoji – she cringed at the memory – had quickly taught her to stick to simple 🙂 smiles in professional chats.
By mid-morning, the team’s group chat was buzzing. Colleagues in London and New York traded updates while Anya double-checked every word she typed. Her manager, Emily, pinged her: “Can you prep the engagement metrics report by EOD? We’ll review tomorrow.”
“Sure thing! I’ll have it ready by end of day 🙂,” Anya responded, following Rule 3 with a polite greeting and adding a cheerful emoji. A quick thumbs-up from Emily reacted to her message, and Anya allowed herself a sip of coffee and a small smile. The manual was working.
That afternoon, a debate flared about the project timeline. Jason in Toronto wrote: “This schedule is brutal. Might have to push launch.” After some back-and-forth, Emily finally replied, “Let’s table this. Jason and Anya, pls advise by COB.”
COB? Anya’s mind went blank. She knew ASAP, FYI, EOD… but not this one. According to Rule 9, she hesitated to ask in the channel. A quick web search told her it meant “close of business.” Relieved at having solved it quietly, Anya messaged Jason privately to confirm. Yes – by 5 p.m. their time.
Together, she and Jason hustled to draft a revised timeline. In her focus, Anya posted one crucial update – a note about a competitor’s campaign – in the wrong place. She sent it in her private chat with Jason instead of the team channel, meaning Emily never saw it.
The next morning, Anya woke to a flood of notifications. In the project channel, Emily had written late in the evening: “Client asked about competitor overlap. Didn’t see that info here in time. Let’s communicate these sooner next round.” Anya’s stomach dropped. Her missed message had left Emily in the dark at a critical moment. She felt a wave of panic and guilt. For a few seconds, she just stared at the screen. She had followed her rules and worked diligently, yet an important detail had slipped through the cracks.
She took a deep breath and did the one thing not in her guide: she openly apologized. “Hi everyone,” she typed in the group chat, “I just realized I shared the competitor info with Jason one-on-one instead of here. I’m really sorry – that’s on me. I’ll make sure to put important updates in the main channel moving forward.” She added a nervous 🙈 emoji, her cheeks burning.
Almost immediately, Jason chimed in: “No worries, Anya. I missed it too 🙂. We’ve got your back.” A moment later Emily responded: “Thanks for clarifying, Anya. Live and learn – it’s okay.”
Anya exhaled, relief mingling with gratitude. Instead of reprimand, she met understanding. A private message from Emily followed: “Appreciate you owning it. Please ask if anything’s unclear – we’re all juggling a lot.”
She smiled at the screen. In that simple exchange, Anya realized her careful rules meant little if she couldn’t be honest when things went wrong. Yes, cultural etiquette was important, but so were transparency and trust.
That evening, she opened her Chat Survival Manual and inserted a new line at the very top:
- Rule 1: Be human, be honest. It’s okay to ask questions and admit mistakes.
The next day, when a confusing idiom flew by about getting “ballpark figures,” Anya resisted the urge to quietly Google it. Instead, she ventured a reply in the chat with a self-deprecating laugh: “Baseball isn’t my specialty – does ballpark mean an estimate?” Smiley faces and explanations streamed in from colleagues, happy to help. She even earned a playful GIF of a cheering baseball, which made her laugh out loud.
Her list of chat rules still hung beside her screen, but it felt different now – less a strict rulebook and more a flexible guide she could update as she learned.
Manual or no manual, Anya was learning that sometimes the best way to survive the chat was to drop the perfectionism and simply say, “I don’t know, can someone help?” In the glow of her monitor, amid the pings and pop-up messages, she felt her confidence growing. Потихоньку – little by little – she was finding her own voice in the digital chorus, one candid question at a time.
This might be my last short story for a while. I’m deep into the longer beauty industry project now, something that started as scattered observations and has become a full manuscript.
The themes from these immigrant stories keep appearing, just in different contexts. Performance, authenticity, the gap between who we are and who we present. These questions travel across all my work, whether I’m writing about visa centres or nail studios.
Posted from London, where my own chat survival manual keeps getting longer
— Writer Julia Zolotova
