Did you check your work emails while on holiday? Hawea Flat writer Liz Breslin vows not to do this in 2012, using instead her "Out Of Office" message.
As New Year's resolutions go, mine is going quite well.
There was the year that I resolved to give up smoking, only to have an accidental cigarette at 12.12am. Oops. But this year my resolution is less oops and more OOO. Out of Office, that is.
According to recent media reports, more and more people are answering work emails and calls outside work hours. The epidemic of smartphones means that we can always check our emails outside work. And because everybody knows that everybody in the world (except me) has one of these devices, it stands to reason that messages should be checked and replies provided out of work hours.
Right?
No. Very, very wrong.
There is a growing backlash against business outside business hours, as can be seen from recent developments overseas.
Volkswagen workers in Germany have successfully negotiated to have email-able phones switched off out of work. And in Brazil, a new law means that employees will now be paid overtime for work email communications outside working hours.
But hold on a cotton-pickin' minute. Isn't this business of work emails in playtime just the ever increasing creep of technology into all our lives?
Being self-employed, it would be marvellous to think I could somehow generate more work by checking my emails more frequently - the temptation is there when you check personal email just to check work stuff, just in case. But the fact is that this so-called smart technology is not making us work smarter.
Longer, yes. But stupider to answer emails at all times of day and night and then complain about always being available.
Hence the New Year's resolution to use my Out Of Office Assistant hugely and wisely, thus banning the angst of not being available 24/7. Instead, I will leave a simple and polite message letting people know not to expect to hear from me straight away. You know - the email equivalent of "Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold", except without the holding.
Bland, nice and factual, these three things being something that British music reviewer Michael Hann reckons his "out of office" email of 2009 isn't. Apparently it went viral, but to save you the trouble of looking it up, it's basically six points along the lines of "I am a very important music reviewer and you are bothering me". I've seen pithier OOO's by far. Case in point: "I currently have limited access to my emails. I'm in prison." Or how about, "Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctor's having my brain removed so that I may be promoted to management." And this one seems to be a perennial internet favourite ... "I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Loretta' instead of 'Anthony'. Ha ha."
It says so many tragic things about our society that we have this form of so-called communication where we hang on and out for screen-based notifications, sometimes from people whose desks are across the room from where we're sitting. And that we need to let people know that we haven't read something they've written but we will. When we're back in the office. On the whatever of whatever. But your message is important so in my absence please contact whoever.
I received my very favourite OOO today, from a budget airline. "Thank you for emailing (us). Please note that your request will be processed and we'll revert with an update soonest possible." It may not be English as we know it but I got their point, it made me laugh - I may even adopt it for myself.
Oh yeah and I'm still waiting for them to revert to me. Soonest possible.
- Liz Breslin, a Hawea writer, is "Out of the Office" and will revert with an update soonest possible.
