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Should holiday email be deleted?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#41

Post by loupgarou21 »

smackfu wrote: post #7

Doesn't this assume that people actually read the out-of-office message?

Just this summer, I had a request with a very specific deadline from a client. I was about to go on vacation, and the deadline was for about a week after I was going to be back. I communicated to the client when I would take care of her request (basically the day after I was going to be back in the office,) but didn't mention that I would be out of the office for the next week.

While I was out of the office, she panicked and decided she needed us to complete her request immediately. If she had updated her original ticket, or opened a new one, it would have been sent to whoever was covering my work while I was out of town. She also didn't bother trying to call our office, which would have resulted in the same thing. Instead she decided her best bet was to email me directly, not once, not twice, but three times, and apparently was blind to my out of office replies all three times.

She finally called our office and yelled at one of the other people here because I wasn't replying to her emails. My coworker told her I was out of town, and she insisted she never received my out of office replies. My coworker ended up sending me test emails from both internal and external email addresses to verify my account was sending the out of office replies, which it was.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#43

Post by Gracana »

How does this work when, say, someone from outside the company emails you? I've been badgering the shit out of a bunch of different companies to try to get a solution for a very specific and complex problem. I need to have good relationships with their application engineers. Auto-responses telling them I'm deleting their emails seems like the sort of thing that might make them decide that my business isn't worth their time. Would outside emails be exempt from this policy?

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#44

Post by e40 »

Nursie wrote: post #38
freshyill wrote: post #30

I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me. I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable. But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handl…

>> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back. Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation. Think a…

Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation.

That is just naive. Many problems can wait until the person gets back. Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#45

Post by lmm »

gearhart wrote: post #31
lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one person works late then other people have to match them. So you end up with a tragedy of the commons/race to the bottom. Which is exactly the situation that calls for laws.

That's a really interesting problem, but falling back on laws to protect you from it seems to be accepting a sub-par solution without having fully explored the issue. This is something that ought to be solved by measurement and corporate culture - if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong wit…

> if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just bow out of the race when you reach your work-life balance.

True, but the assumption is false. As an industry we're terrible at measuring outputs, and sadly this causes management to fall back on measuring inputs.

And even that, you don't get a free choice of. Working 75% as long as the rest of your team doesn't get you 75% of the salary, it gets you fired.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#46

Post by stronglikedan »

This seems like a solution looking for a problem. The proposed "problem" of trawling through hundreds of emails doesn't seem like a problem to me.

I just go through and flag actionable items, instead of trying to answer anything right away. I start with the newest messages first, so I can ignore the thread of messages that lead up to the latest.

I've never spent more than an hour narrowing hundreds of emails down to a few that still require my attention. A small price to pay to keep things from falling through the cracks, because guess who is going to get blamed when someone forgets to resend an important message to me?

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#47

Post by acheron »

lmm wrote: post #45
gearhart wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really interesting problem, but falling back on laws to protect you from it seems to be accepting a sub-par solution without having fully explored the issue. This is something that ought to be solved by measurement and corporate culture - if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong wit…

> if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just bow out of the race when you reach your work-life balance. True, but the assumption is false. As an industry we're terrible at measuring outputs, and sadly this causes management to fall back on measuring inputs. And even that, y…

I in fact do work 75% time for 75% salary, and somehow I managed to work it out as a mutually voluntary arrangement with my employer without using the coercive power of the State.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#48

Post by Nursie »

e40 wrote: post #44
Nursie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back. Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation. Think a…

Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation. That is just naive. Many problems can wait until the person gets back. Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

>> Many problems can wait until the person gets back.

And many have gone away when the person gets back, then the first thing the person has to do is trawl through a backlog and send out a bunch of "is this still needed?" emails. Putting the onus back on the person that needs it is a positive.

>> Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

It's your problem because you need input from the other person, so it's your responsibility to chase it up no? Even with the backlog system there's a greater than average chance that your email will be missed in amongst noise.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#49

Post by lmm »

acheron wrote: post #47
lmm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just bow out of the race when you reach your work-life balance. True, but the assumption is false. As an industry we're terrible at measuring outputs, and sadly this causes management to fall back on measuring inputs. And even that, y…

I in fact do work 75% time for 75% salary, and somehow I managed to work it out as a mutually voluntary arrangement with my employer without using the coercive power of the State.

Good for you, but that requires an unusually enlightened employer. There were some people who managed to arrange safe jobs in the pre-OHSA days. Doesn't mean government intervention wasn't necessary.

Re: Should holiday email be deleted?

#50

Post by smackfu »

skrebbel wrote: post #42
smackfu wrote: post #7

Doesn't this assume that people actually read the out-of-office message?

If you send a mail and don't even read the response, why the hell did you send the mail?

As mentioned elsewhere, most people just read the title that says "out of office" and take action based on that. If it's low priority, they'll just let it wait until the person returns. They certainly wouldn't expect it to be deleted.
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