[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.