[freshyill]

I know there are things at my job that only I can do, even if they are documented. If certain things will need urgent attention while I'm out, I'll arrange to have someone cover for me.

I can understand not reading it, and setting the expectation with your employer and coworkers that you're on vacation and you won't be reading emails. That's very reasonable.

But just deleting emails? That sounds kind of nuts. I handle my email when I get back. And I send emails to other people with the expectation that they'll handle theirs when they get back.

If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. I'm sending that email for the purpose of getting work done. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.

Setting proper boundaries and expectations is the solution. If you're getting so much email that it's an insurmountable task once you get back from vacation, maybe your company needs to reexamine its email culture and practices.

[Nursie]

>> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.

Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation.

Think about it the other way, you go away for two weeks. You come back to hundreds of emails, many of which are questions. Most of the questions probably got answered by someone else, or are no longer relevant at all. If a question does still need answering, hell yes it's the asker's responsibility to communicate to you that it's still important.

[e40]

Yes, it's still your problem when the other person is on vacation.

That is just naive. Many problems can wait until the person gets back. Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

[Nursie]

>> Many problems can wait until the person gets back.

And many have gone away when the person gets back, then the first thing the person has to do is trawl through a backlog and send out a bunch of "is this still needed?" emails. Putting the onus back on the person that needs it is a positive.

>> Yeah, sure, if it's something that needs to be dealt with before the person gets back from vacation, it's my problem. Otherwise, it is NOT my problem.

It's your problem because you need input from the other person, so it's your responsibility to chase it up no? Even with the backlog system there's a greater than average chance that your email will be missed in amongst noise.

[e40]

You keep replying to the really, really unlikely case. I can't remember the last time I got an "is this still needed?" email.

[Nursie]

Why is this unlikely?

Last time I worked a traditional job I would get back after a couple of weeks away to find hundreds of emails. Many were corporate spam, sure, but the majority of the rest were time-sensitive requests for my input which you may as well file straight to trash, if you can figure out which ones are now irrelevant.

Far better to have an auto-trasher and a notice to say 'ask me again in two weeks if this is important'

[mseebach]

> If I have a question for a coworker, I'll email it to them. I don't expect a response if they're on vacation. The question is now theirs to deal with, in due time. By auto-deleting it, it reverts to being my problem. I'm sending that email for the purpose of getting work done. In that sense, auto-deleting it is preventing me from doing my work. And then I just have to send it again once they're back.

Here's the deal, and this is the point I think the (maybe unnecessarily heavy-handed) policy is meant to drive: You're not free to task your colleagues with work while they're away on holiday just be cause you can. If you rely on someone who's not there to get your job done then you can't do you job. That may or may be be your fault, but the organisation needs to be able to keep functioning while members are on holiday.

Sure, there exists cases where you only need a reply eventually, and only from that one exact individual, but in most cases, someone is actually covering and can handle the request as part of the normal workload, and in most of those cases, everybody is better off if you actually re-route the request to that person immediately.

And here's the bit I think is slightly heavy handed: Coming back from holidays, I like spending an afternoon skimming over emails for situational awareness. Deleting email would deprive me of the option to passively catch up rather than depending on having everything explained to me by colleagues. Skimming a few thousand emails is easy, making sure you've caught everything single thing you might be expected to respond to is stressful.

[scott_s]

I agree with Nursie; it is still your problem. If it's the sort of thing that only that person can handle, then such things are more appropriately tracked in a separate system which is not lossy. (Think bug-tracking software.)

[sinaa]

Maybe a solution to this could be the mail client/system sending an automated email to the sender on your return (as a reminder).

"Two weeks ago, you sent me an email, however my mail client automatically deleted it. If it is something I can still help you with, please reply back with the original email.

-- this is an automatically generated email --"