This document must be completed by any individual considering a second message before receiving a reply to their first. Fill in all sections. Do not send anything until your supervisor (your best friend, who is also bored of this) has signed off.
Section A: Description of Activity
Sending a follow-up text to a person who ignored the first one, which you drafted for forty minutes to sound like you wrote it in four seconds.
Time since original message: 3 hours, 14 minutes. Times phone has been checked: the number is evidence. Destroy it.
Section B: Hazards Identified
- Appearing keen. Severity: high. Being keen is legal. Being seen being keen is a life sentence.
- The Unreply Spiral. Two unanswered bubbles stacked up look like a monument to your own poor judgement.
- Typos. Rushing a second text raises spelling errors by 70%, according to a study nobody funded and everybody ignored.
- The Accidental Essay. It starts as “haha also” and ends as four paragraphs and a timeline.
A double-text is not desperate. It is a single text that has not yet accepted reality.
Section C: Existing Controls
Phone placed face down. Phone placed in another room. Phone retrieved from another room “to check the time.” The time is 23:52. You are 37.
Section D: Additional Controls Proposed
- Send a funny, unrelated follow-up. A photo of a strange dog is industry standard.
- Avoid “no worries if not” and “just checking you got this.” They got it. That’s the problem.
- Keep it under fifteen words. Breathe out. Lower your expectations to floor level, then dig.
Section E: Residual Risk
Moderate. Statistically, they are busy, asleep, or at a gym with no signal. Also statistically, they are on their phone right now, replying to someone else, faster.
Section F: Sign-Off
Assessor’s decision: proceed with the dog photo.
Outcome: delivered 23:58. Read 23:59. Reply received nine days later: “haha.”
Incident closed. Dignity not recovered. Dog photo now lives on their phone forever.