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I wrote a mail asking for some job to be done at the earliest. I was replied with "I'll do it this afternoon, problems." I don't understand the meaning of that extra "problems" at the end. The person was British.

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    Crappy unchecked predictive text, probably. It's certainly not some "special usage" that non-native speakers need to concern themselves with, even if this was the right site to be asking.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 12:46
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    I'm going to guess that there's a missing 'no' before 'problems'.
    – KillingTime
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 12:46
  • He forgot to put a ? mark after 'problems'.
    – Ram Pillai
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 14:01

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How early in the morning did you send the e-mail? Perhaps the person who replied would have started it straight away, and guessed that they would have finished it that morning if they had, but they can't start on it until the afternoon, because they have problems to deal with, and they must deal with those problems first.

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    ELU (as with other SE sites) is not intended for speculative answers, second-guessing what ill-constructed texts are intended to mean.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 13:44
  • With a newly formed grammar over the last few years, that interpretation would make this an elided form of [because] problems. And why would that be somewhat acceptable at this point? Because English.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 16:02

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