Long Story Short ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Out of Office Reply I work in a dark ages facility, seriously. And that makes NO SENSE since we are supposed to be all excellent and stuff. Well, only as excellent as the government. And now that I think about it...umm...hmmm...maybe the whole "dark ages" thing makes more sense. Anyway. I have slowly and grudgingly gotten used to the fact that we do not use voice mail. Like, ever. Except during non-work hours. Instead we use these ancient tools known as "pens" and "paper" to write messages. We check little boxes that say "please call" or "came to see you". Yes, I know, it's very archaic. So as you know (have I mentioned it, perchance?) I am beginning my vacation today at 3:00pm. I mean, not fucking really since I have about 89 million tasks to accomplish between now and 11:00 am Sunday, but let's not get into that shall we? Let's pretend at 3:00 I will be on a beach in Aruba. Anyway, in order to be as upfront with customers as possible about my Being On Vacation status I decided that I need to remember to set up my automatic Out of Office reply on my email. I get many many emails every day and it would be in my best interest to explain to customers up front that I am out, and not just totally ignoring them for days at a time. Guess what I found out? We don't have the capability to set Out of Office replies. It "fouls up the system" or something insane like that. So rather than "being on vacation" I will now be perceived as BAD AT MY JOB for the next week. Because I just know I'm going to get at least 1,000 "can you help me?" emails during that time. Argh, I am frustrated. Can you hear my frustration? I just want to GO AWAY and not have to STRESS OUT about my JOB. I do not want people to complain about my turn-around time. Because even if I email every single person back upon my return there will still be that one employee who remembers that one time it took me a week to get back to them and they will say something like, "Oh Carly's not really good about getting back to people" and that will SUCK. I live in an office that defines perception as reality (seriously, that's a quote from a Big Dude) and if I am perceived as bad at my job, or lazy, I will be treated that way. That being said, I should probably get off the internet. Heh. 12:18 p.m. - 2005-10-07 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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