A Long Game, Polly

One of the nice features of Microsoft Outlook is its “Out of Office Assistant.” It’s a simple macro designed to automatically respond to your e-mails when you are unable to do so. Granted, it will only be able to respond with the message you have left for it, and can’t quite pull off sarcasm as well as you might hope, but it’s an unexpected bonus tool of the Microsoft Office Empire.

But if I wanted a parrot, I would have bought a parrot.

Over the past week, I wasn’t in the office much. I had a wedding in NYC, a surprise early arrival in the NJ, and a New Year’s party at the YAZ. So I made sure that if anyone e-mailed me, they would receive the following automated response in return, courtesy of my Out of Office Assistant, Polly:

“I will be out of the office and will return on January 2nd. I will be checking e-mail intermittently and will respond to urgent requests.”

And for the most part, what Polly sent to you people was true. I was out of the office, and I did return, as promised. Of course, intermittently meant, eh, twice and an urgent request would have had to have read,”Help me now. My couch is on fire, FedEx hasn’t delivered your Christmas present yet, the Eagles are thinking about signing Koy Detmer, and we’re out of string cheese.”

Translation: Nothing was that urgent.

So while the heads-up from Polly must have been nice, was it really all that helpful? Probably not. Was Polly just following orders from her direct supervisor? Yeah. Can she do anything else of real value, like file e-mails or format spreadsheets? Not really.

Why do I keep her on the payroll?

I don’t even have the funding in my budget for an In the Office Assistant. I understand that filling that position would be way more helpful – being able to dictate clerical tasks that I don’t feel like doing and dealing with people I don’t want to talk to would be a grand reducer of stress. But In the Office Assistants are too demanding. They want a place to sit. They want to be paid in something other than “electronic data.” Good God, they probably even want 401k and dental. And since I have all the funding that Robert Parrish was fit to wear, it doesn’t appear that I’m getting an In the Office Assistant anytime soon.

That leaves Polly. The poorly paid, oft-bored Polly.

There’s another problem with Polly – we don’t communicate well. In fact, we’ve never even spoken. When I need her to come in and work (since I do not plan to be there simultaneously), I let Outlook know that she needs to come in tomorrow. I leave a note telling her what I need her to tell people while I’m away. And just to test her, I’ll send her an email from my gmail account to see if she’s slacking off on the job.

She’s yet to slack off on the job.

But when I am scheduled to come back, and am actually sitting at my desk, Polly can’t quite take a hint. Here I am, typing and responding to people’s e-mails, and yet, she still insists on sending out the message I told her to while I was away. This thus confuses the recipient of both our e-mails to no end. It’s not until she sends something out to an undeliverable address that I realize she’s even working.

Look, Polly, I understand that the holidays are expensive and everyone could use the overtime, but this is the last straw (because I clearly make my executive decisions based on the multitude of bendy drinking devices I have remaining.) Polly, we’re going to have to let you go.

You’re fired.