Vacations. Holidays. The moments we seemingly build our lives around, escapes from the ordinary, underscoring what it means to depart. Proceeded by a sense of anticipation, in the days before our long-awaited time off, our bodies begin to taste the exhale, excitement building as we get ourselves situated to check out.
This might mean putting a temporary stop on the mail. Making arrangements to ensure our pets are fed. And for those in the working world, many moons ago vacation prep was also synonymous with turning on the ultimate sign of freedom:
The out of office auto response.
When I began working in corporate America, the only form of technology on my person was a baby blue Nokia phone. The computer I worked on was a desktop – as in the OG version with a tower, free-standing monitor and keyboard – a cascade of wires essentially chaining it to the floor. So travel, be it for business or pleasure, meant a legitimate absence from work. And therefore, it required notice that you would not (essentially could not) be tending to your typical role.
Please note I will be out of the office from X date to Y date and will respond to your email when I return.
The message was clear: Whatever the sender was in need of was going to have to wait.
I can remember how liberating it felt to put that message on, even if it was accompanied by a sneaking shadow of anxiety about sorting through a slog of emails upon my return. It felt like a bona fide permission slip to mentally check out from responsiveness and to-dos.
Yet as I write this, I realize that an entire generation of people likely don’t have the love affair I do with the out of office response. They might not even have ever used one before. Because not long after I settled in to my out-of-office independence, my cherished BlackBerry arrived, as did my first laptop: heavy, but now seemingly the main resident in my carry on, wherever I did go.
So the message changed: Now, instead of letting people know they would have to wait, we were letting them know we had “limited access” or “would be responding intermittently.” We were still here, we wanted to assure them, your needs matter. Just give us a little extra time to get back to you.
But we will.
Of course, this shift was just the beginning of a complete deterioration of the metaphorical boundary that demarcated whether we were in the office or not. At some point, if used, it simply became a courtesy, an FYI; because while you might not physically be in your place of work, it was common knowledge that your work could find you wherever you were.
Today, it never ceases to amaze me that in the rare instance when I’m on the receiving end of a throwback out of office response just how often I receive an actual response from that same person within an hour or two of being informed that they are away.
Every time this happens I find myself feeling deflated about the way we are living our lives. Of what has happened to our values. Our priorities.
Because now instead of asking our co-workers or a client to wait, we – by perpetually being on call – are telling others their needs matter less than our obligation to peck away.
We’re telling (not asking) our partners to wait.
Our children.
Our poor bodies that are in need of TLC and love.
Yet the reality is that until we realize that our needs matter just as much as those on the other end of some eye-straining screen, we are only further feeding the disease of making our lives tantamount with work.
So maybe start with an afternoon. Or an hour. But throw that bad boy up and allow yourself to be completely unavailable. To resist the urge to respond and maybe even inspire others to do the same.
The message: When it comes to hustle culture, it’s never too late to opt out.