Economic Indicator or Behavior Change?

Yesterday I sent out an email to the 40,500 employees of EMC and then held my breath waiting for the tsunami of “Out of the Office Replies” to flood my inbox.  It is August, after all, so “Out of the Office Reply” (OOR) volume could be double the norm, right?

Wrong.  I barely got any.  Two, maybe three screen swipes deleted all of them. The last time I sent an EMC All email (a couple of years ago) my box was spammed with OOR’s for days.

 

Either people are not taking vacations this year (and I doubt that, catchy “economic indicator” headline aside), or few of us are using “Out of the Office” replies any more.

What do you think is the reason?

• Gas prices are so high that people have moved into their offices?
• Everyone is on wireless devices… thus always “in” the virtual office?
• The concept of being “unavailable” just isn’t credible anymore?

Are you still using?

• I used one when I was out on vacation earlier this summer merely to set expectations that I might not answer the message … though, in reality, I was much more responsive while on vacation because no meetings got in the way with catching up on email ... which I could do from the comfort of my beach chair. A new model is certainly needed. My kids hate the sight of my blackberry.

What are the implications?

• Will blogs like those below containing OOR humor become irrelevant – or, oddly, more relevant because there will be so few OOR's that they might actually get read?
  •  “Out of the Office or Out to Lunch?”   
  •  “OUT OF OFFICE AUTOREPLY” 

• What about the children?

(For those who want to tell me about setting up an alias so that the OOR’s go to place where they won’t bother my main email box … I know. I know. I set one up. Then I was told it would take an extra 6 hours for the email to go out via the alias. What? I don’t know, maybe IT had to get involved or something. I decided to take the spamload bullet for my peeps so they could get the info 6 hours earlier. In the end it was not a heroic deed at all. No need to acknowledge my bravery or say thanks.)

Is this the OOR on life support? Should something take its place?

- Polly