"Thank you for your e-mail, I am currently out of office"

Finally, the European summer vacation season is slowly grinding to a halt and the peons in head office are reluctantly returning to their desks and computers with as much motivation as me cleaning the toilet. This means that a number of projects and items that has been hanging in summer vacation limbo can now finally soon start moving again. On a personal level, I fully support the summer vacation system in Europe (ok, six weeks in a row might be overdoing it a little, but a month is reasonable!) but it does cause a lot of problems for subsidiaries in Japan who basically operate business as usual over the summer months.

I would here like to share with you some highlights of the “out of office replies” I did receive when trying to get some stuff moving this summer.

Mail 1: Sent to Mr. A at the end of July; receiving an out of office reply “I am on vacation until September the 7th with little access to e-mail, in my absence please contact Mr. B”
Mail 2: Sent to Mr. B minutes after this, receiving an out of office reply “I am on vacation until August the 31st and will not be able to read my e-mail, in my absence please contact Mr. A”

I can’t shake the feeling that they did this deliberately and were hoping to catch the mailer in some form of logic loop and avoid the issue…

Mail 3: Sent to Mr. C mid-August, receiving an out of office reply “I am out of the office until the end of August and will not be reading my e-mail, all e-mail received during my absence will be automatically deleted so please mail me again when I am back in the office”

I wish I could pull shit like that...