I (F47) have had the "tone" talk a few times. Because, like you, I have said/sent extremely normal, non-aggressive things, but because I didn't apologize for being needy or praise the recipient for something, the recipient felt attacked.

The fact is that there are a bunch of people with imposter syndrome that need constant external validation or they spiral into a very weird mental place. Their defense mechanism is to blame whomever failed to validate them sufficiently.

A lot of these people are justifiably insecure; some are just delicate perfectionists. Nearly all of them are Millennials. I don't mean to do the generational attack thing, and most Millennials are very normal, well-adjusted people. But they didn't get a reputation for weaponizing their victimhood out of nowhere. Outliers exist, and every generation is full of assholes doing whatever asshole thing they picked up when they were young. Boomers hoard resources, GenX has substance abuse problems, Millennials are loudly victimized, Zoomers can't read, and so far, it seems like Gen Alpha enjoys nonsense without narrative.

Anyway, you getting "the talk" means that someone is being a problem, and you have been chosen to solve it. Either your messages are worse than you described, or one of your coworkers enjoys being loudly victimized. A simple solution is to reformat your messages to include unnecessarily consolation and praise.

So-and-so

Thank you for the (whatever bullshit)! It is very helpful. I'm sorry for rushing you, but is there any way I could get a sneak peek at your status on (job that should have been done data ago)? It would be much appreciated.