“不在办公室”留言指南

“不在办公室”留言指南

作为公事繁忙的上班族，休假或外出会议等事宜会不可避免地影响到回复重要的工作邮件，因此人们往往会选择留下out-of-office信息——其目的就在于告知发邮件的对方静待回复或是另请高明，避免耽误紧急事项。然而在科技飞速发展的今天，传统的out-of-office邮件似乎略显过时，或许我们需要更聪明的方式来管理那些离开办公室的时间？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

merit 值得

hurdle 障碍

self-referential 自指的

affliction 苦恼

ruse 策略

plausibility 可信度

The out of date out-of-office message（790 words）

By Lisa Pollack

When Professor Randy Pausch took a month off work for his honeymoon,his boss at Carnegie Mellon University insisted that he be reachable. So he recorded a message for when people tried to call. On it he explained that he'd waited until 39 to get married. Then he gave the names of his new in-laws and the town they lived in,so a caller could get their number from directory assistance. Then,lastly: “If you can convince my in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter's honeymoon,they have our number.”

I was thinking about this clever out-of-office notification as I tried to construct my own in email form. Prof Pausch's honeymoon message is a story from a more technologically innocent age — it was about 15 years ago,which is at least 100 in internet years. Back then,aside from the hurdles put in place by determined honeymooners,there were also plausible reasons to be out of touch. Now,technology is so good that it's ruined our favourite excuses for not being reachable. Writing that one has “limited” or “intermittent” access to email is usually no more than a declaration that one intends to be choosy about dealing with it.

But this is only half the story. The other is that technology,particularly when it comes to the out-of-office message,hasn't kept up. There's a robot that walks like a dog and cars drive themselves,so why don't we have smarter ways to manage time spent away from work?

An obvious improvement would be to add functionality to email clients that spreadsheet software has had for years: warnings that self-referential loops,aka “circular references”,have been created. This affliction hits parts of Europe especially hard in August. Person A is out of the office,please contact Person B if it's urgent. Person B says the same,refers emailer to Person C in an emergency. Person C refers to Person A. It is either a clever ruse or poor planning,but given that everyone is already emotionally and mentally,if not physically,out of the door when they set this up,it's probably the latter.

From this it logically follows that any new out-of-office technology would have to respect the fact that having high quality time off is a team effort. So one of the top features for development should be a warning that pops up when you're about to email someone from whom you've already received an out-of-office. The system will be smart enough to consider the dates that the holiday-maker said they were away in their email. This isn't my idea. It's covered by a US patent filed（grant pending）in 2006 that's owned by IBM.

I'd like it to go one further by having it hook up with an email scheduling service,giving you the option to forward the conversation to the well-slept sod on the day of their return in order to make absolutely clear that yes,they were right to wish that they could have just stayed in the Lake District forever.

Provided colleagues heeded the warnings,such functionality would be a boon to those of us who have poor self-control when it comes to unplugging from the Matrix. It would also,however,provide the added bonus of making it abundantly clear who the most and least helpful people are when we are attempting down time.

Perhaps in the year after the release of a new add-in to Gmail or Outlook that provides this tool,the survey for the 100 Best Companies to Work For could include a Jerk Index measuring the number of out-of-office notices heeded versus overridden.

The next new feature would generate a public plausibility score for a given out-of-office message. If the message says “intermittent access” but the person is replying to messages at a rate that implies that they want an excuse not to spend time with their family,their plausibility score would be near zero.

If the message says “no access” and the person replies to anything,this system will send them an image of US talk-show host Maury Povich along with the text: “Your out-of-office said that you wouldn't be replying to emails. The fact that you replied determined that was a lie.”

As for my own message,I decided on something non-committal. Until technology catches up,I might as well keep my options open. Oh,and I left Person B out of it. He's not in anyway.