# Slack Was Lunch. Teams Is the Dentist.

Two weeks after leaving Slack, Charles Vanek reflects on why Microsoft Teams feels exhausting: confusing conversations, slower navigation, and small delays that add up.

Author: Charles Vanek
Published: 2026-10-15
Updated: 2026-10-15
Category: General
Canonical URL: https://www.teamsaccessibility.com/articles/why-microsoft-teams-is-exhausting.html

![A red thread winds through a maze of overlapping conversation panels.](https://www.teamsaccessibility.com/assets/images/articles/teams-conversation-maze-png-1732.webp)
The effort of finding your way through workplace conversations.
AI-generated conceptual illustration.

I've officially hit two weeks sans-Slack. Fully engulfed in Microsoft Teams.

I'm exhausted.

Everything seems to take a little longer. Finding the conversation. Checking whether it's the right conversation. Figuring out where someone replied. None of these things sounds particularly awful on its own. Do them all day, though, and you spend an impressive amount of energy just trying to get to the work.

I miss Slack. And the longer I spend in Teams, the more I understand exactly what I miss.

## Slack knew where to find me

Slack had the secret sauce with notifications. In my experience, it knew which device deserved my attention.

I'd go to lunch, and a critical message would tap me on the wrist through my Apple Watch. Back at the PC after lunch, Slack would let me know there. I didn't have to give much thought to the handoff. The message found me, and I got on with my day. At night, switch to my personal PC, Slack was happily there to pass on a notification that met my rules, it was nice.

That sounds like a small thing. It is a small thing. That's why getting it right matters so much. A notification shouldn't become another task to manage.

So much of what I liked about Slack worked that way. Creating a channel, adjusting notifications, changing things with slash commands. I could do what I needed and keep moving... fast.

Reminders were a breeze, create with a slash command, a message, an @mention, a time. Right there in the text box, while the thought was still in my head and the fingers never left the keyboard.

## I didn't need a filing system

I did very little organizing of channels and direct messages in Slack. For me, it simply wasn't necessary.

The quick switcher was so good at putting the right conversation at the top that I rarely had to think about where anything lived. Between that and the shortcut to jump to the next unread conversation, I could fly. No hunt and peck through lists of things. No elaborate filing system to maintain before I could talk to somebody.

Later and Threads gave me useful places to return to. I knew where to pick things up.

That speed mattered. When you're working through conversations with a keyboard and screen reader, getting to the right place efficiently is a substantial part of the experience. Every extra bit of navigation competes with the conversation you're trying to follow.

I want to think about what my coworker said. I don't want finding it to be a project. Sometimes they don't even know where they sent a message. These issues are not unique to an accessibility mindset, virtually everyone working at scale has similar complaints.

## Which conversation are we having?

My Teams experience has become a swamp of conversations with names that are just similar enough to get everyone into trouble.

Someone replies to the chat from a non-recurring meeting last week instead of the similarly named channel in a team. Someone else gives a group chat the same name as a channel somewhere else, except the group chat has different people in it.

Now the name alone doesn't tell me enough. Which conversation is this? Who is in here? Is this where the discussion is supposed to happen, or is there another version of it happening somewhere else?

I understand how people end up replying in the wrong place. I'm confused too.

And untangling it takes time. Time to locate the conversation, time to establish the context, time to work out whether the people who need the answer will actually receive it.

## Slack felt like people worked there

We had wonderful apps in Slack, too. Donut. Polly. Little things that helped people connect and participate. In our workspace, they just worked.

People were smacking all sorts of different emoji onto messages. There was personality in the place. A sense that coworkers were enjoying each other somewhere between all the things that needed doing and getting positive momentum throughout the day from each other.

Slack felt like going out to lunch with coworkers. An inviting restaurant. The right ambiance. Work comes into all conversations, but you were happy to be there, people were smiling and synergy was pouring out.

Teams feels like going to the dentist.

You know it's good for you. You know you're supposed to go regularly. But the place feels sterile, the setup is awkward, and getting comfortable seems to involve equipment nobody has adequately explained. Why again do you need to zap me with a small dose of radiation? Probably a boat payment is due.

You settle in and hope today's visit involves poking rather than drilling.

## A little slower, all day long

The exhausting part is how it accumulates.

A little longer to find something. Another pause to search the destination. One more trip through a list. By the end of the day, I've spent more time in an application I wanted to spend less time in.

I never needed Slack to make my job effortless. There was plenty of things to tackle top down waiting for me nicely organized. I appreciated how quickly it let me get to that work, and how little attention it demanded along the way.

That's what I want from Teams.

Microsoft has all the ingredients to make this great. That's what makes the experience so frustrating. Somehow it feels like somebody reached for baking soda instead of baking powder, and the whole thing caved in and they are still trying to figure out what happen.

This is also why I haven't planted a new article here in a few weeks, even though writing these is therapeutic. After a day of working in Teams, finding the energy to write about Teams has been a bit much.

But here we are. Two weeks sans Slack, and apparently my next article is a dental complaint.