Thank you for your time

If someone invests time with you, whether it’s to help with a project, move a sofa, or just go to the movies, it’s appropriate to thank them for their time. They willingly gave of themselves, and deserve a bit of thanks for it.

What if you steal their time, though? Can you still thank them for something they didn’t mean to give you?

Stealing apples

Suppose you’re at a farmer’s market and see some amazing apples. You could, if you chose to, walk up and take one of the apples and shout a “thanks for the apple” back to the seller as you walk away. It sounds like something a bully would do in cheesy movies from the 90's.

I’m finding this in some cold emails that I get, too, and I interpret it the same way. Simply the act of opening the email is an unearned theft of my time, so a “thank you for your time” doesn’t make it any better.

Here’s an example of one I recently received:

They have the “unsubscribe” info at the footer, but you should never find yourself in a situation needing to unsubscribe from something that you didn’t subscribe to in the first place. Seth Godin summed that up perfectly in a post from almost a decade ago:

Some spammers will tell you that all you need to do is opt out. But of course, the very problem with spam is that it…