On Vacation
Thanks for your message.
I’ve been told that spending time with people in my life outside of professional colleagues in a relaxed, non-home setting is advisable and may increase my productivity. I know that my return to the office, where your email will be waiting along with hundreds of others, is inevitable and will be more painful than if I simply decided to remain at work.
I will reply upon my return on July 29, and will continue to reply to all emails in a timely manner until my death.
On Business Travel
Thanks for the note.
Please be aware that my response will be delayed by the fact that I am careening through the sky over an ocean in a long, narrow tin can at 600 miles per hour. I care not that I am risking my life for this company, because it would find a different way to kill me eventually.
In addition, I will be available only during Central European Time (CET) business hours from July 29 through August 2.
In a Training
Thanks for your email.
I am participating in a day-long training with my team, in which we will all pretend that things are actually knowable and an objective reality exists. In addition, we will act as though knowledge has some kind of intrinsic value. Armed with these supposedly empirical facts about the GAAP New Leasing Standard, I will reply to your message tomorrow, July 30. It is unlikely to be a more helpful reply than anything I could have come up with prior to today, July 29.
At a Corporate Volunteering Event
Thanks for reaching out!
Please be informed that I am performing compassion and virtue with other employees of this unfeeling and monolithic financial services firm. We will be sorting canned foods for three hours, as though our other 37 hours of labor this week won’t exacerbate income inequality and hunger in our community and, indeed, the world.
To learn more about our CSR initiatives, click here!
On Parental Leave
I will be out of the office until December 2 on parental leave. My partner and I thought bringing another living creature that requires food and attention into this morally and ecologically bankrupt world would infuse our lives with joy and meaning. In reality, we have little optimism.
In the meantime, for any urgent requests, please reach out to my team.
Migrating to a New Computer
Thank you in advance for your patience as I spend the rest of the day migrating my files and operating system to a new device.
This is also an opportunity for me to witness, in real time on my phone email, how few people directly contact me during business hours and can easily get help from one of dozens of identical cogs in the untiring machine that employs us.
But if you do need me, please expect a response no earlier than tomorrow morning, once my new news-reading, podcast-streaming device is up and running.
Have a great day!
