out of office reply

I can’t help noticing that I am getting a very large number of almost instantaneous responses to many of the e-mails I’m sending at work. I’m getting more of them than I am spam. The subject of those responses is “out of office reply.”

I’m not bitching. I think the out of office reply is great, because one can know immediately that the recipient didn’t read your e-mail. For example, today I sent out a request for proposal to three people and got an instant response from each. They were all out of the office, but their out of office replies advised me they would all be back Monday.

But here is the deal.

It used to be that people took their vacation throughout the year, but now, everyone is so busy that they have to take their vacation days at the end of the year. Everyone is on a quest to use up their days before they use up their year. I think it demonstrates a paradigm change in society. We’re all working longer, harder and putting off taking our vacation.

Either that, or we are managing our e-mail programs better.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this, but most of you won’t read it until next week because you’re probably out of the office, burning those last few days of vacation for the year.

At least that’s what we think, here in Jimbo’s world.