Composing an out-of-office message used to take 30 seconds and was usually written minutes before you headed to the airport on vacation. As a friend’s OOO noted: “I am offline until Sept. 29. Off the grid. No email. No phone. No texts.”
In a very few words, this sent a big, clear message.
Now, out-of-office emails have become Rorschach Tests for our relationship to our inbox, our friends and ourselves. True, fewer of us have an office to be out of anymore. But email, far from being dead, is gobbling up the world. We now send and receive 361 billion emails every day.
My first clue that emailing was becoming a platform for pearl-clutchers and virtue-signalers came last year when I read on the bottom of a friend’s email: “I am sending this email at a time that works for me. I don’t expect you to respond to it until normal business hours, or when it suits your own work-life balance. I encourage you to make guiltless work-life choices and support flexible working.”
My barely gagged reply?
“Gag me.”
This was not even an out-of-office note. As Elizabeth Bernstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month: “I recently emailed an old friend. We hadn’t talked in a while and I looked forward to catching up. Then I got his automated response: “I am out of the office having way more fun than communicating with you. I will likely forget to email you back.”
So much for brevity and politesse. The era of naked frankness is on the rise. We are now in the Age of Competitive Absence.
Bernstein quotes a second case, from Barry Ritholtz, chair of a New York wealth management firm whose OOO note said he was “peacefully contemplating the world” from a remote lake in Maine. “During this time, I will be out of the office, not checking emails, avoiding texts, avoiding Slack, letting calls go to voicemail, off the grid, and generally unreachable. As such, my auto-responder is, well, auto-responding.”
Among those to contact in a true emergency, Ritholtz lists Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and the People’s Republic of China. Clearly, he hopes emergencies either aren’t, or will solve themselves by the time he gets back from Maine.
As another OOO emailer wrote: “If this is urgent, take a deep breath, because few things really are.”
True, that.
Meanwhile…
1. Staying alive. Cats do this better than us. Women are much more likely to be beaten up by their partners. With suicide rising fast, do we need universal screening for it?
2. Staying well. First, why does it take so long to realize we’re not well? Maybe we’re pre-wired for depression. Maybe we’re Sophia Loren who turned 90 yesterday. Or maybe we’ve just got a bad therapist.
3. The Power Broker. Robert Caro’s classic book on politics and unchecked power was published 50 years ago this week. Even its author said no one would buy a book about Robert Moses, New York’s megalomaniacal city planner. Today, The Power Broker is in its 74th printing and is on everyone’s list of the most important books of the 20th century. Indeed, it’s more popular today than ever, inspiring “video and board games, a Broadway play and a “Repeal Robert Moses” movement, led by an organization that aims to reclaim the city from cars.”
It also spawned a show at the New York Historical Society, and the viral podcast about the book has drawn an enormous audience and four million downloads. So if The Power Broker is a stranger to you, it’s time to make its 1,286 pages your friend.
4. Where do you get your arts and entertainment? ‘Tis the season for the Fall roundup of upcoming books, plays, concerts, TV shows and more. The trouble is, our familiar media chronicle pretty much all the usual suspects. So try this if you’re looking for what’s different, unknown and far away: the BBC’s list of “the best culture to look forward to this autumn,” organized not by medium, but by theme.
Also, you know how Michelin has stars to denote restaurant excellence? Well, this is year four of Michelin ‘keys’ for excellence in hotels. Three Keys is the ne plus ultra and two Canadian hotels won that honour: the Fogo Island Inn in Joe Batt’s Arm, Newfoundland, and Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge in Tofino, B.C.
5. A new Trump woman. Marjorie Taylor Greene used to represent the unacceptable face of Trumpism. Greene is loud, rude and profane. But she is Caesar’s wife compared to the ex-President’s latest campaign accompanist, Laura Loomer.
She’s the person who egged Trump on about “They’re eating the pets.” Indeed, as part of a promotional deal for the pet food brand Pawsitive on her Rumble channel, Loomer filmed herself eating dog food.
Here’s what Jon Stewart thinks of Trump’s latest …flame.
6. All this Jazz. The 9th annual Kensington Market Jazz Festival opens on Friday, Sept. 27th with The Shuffle Demons. No advance tickets. Cash at the door all weekend long.
7. Balance. The mainline media is often criticized for ‘balance as bias’ (also called bothsidesism) that gives both sides of an issue equal time or space. This assumes all issues (abortion, climate change, vaccines, Trump) are morally equal. They aren’t, as Jeff Jarvis points out about The New York Times. Unlike many media commentators, Jarvis discloses all of his relationships to the media he’s critiquing.
Other kinds of balance involve flipping your bike atop a moving train; playing your violin in outer space, playing your cello in inner space, and ‘free-handling’ the world’s deadliest snake.
8. Bad guys win. Last month, Russian Oligarchs took on Britain’s Serious Fraud Office and won. Plus, how the soft drinks industry turned its products into medicine.
9. Not fake news. Indeed, all-too-true news. Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and 7th richest person on earth, has created (and stars in) a series of instructional videos, Just the Facts, on big issues like immigration in America, healthcare and the economy. Someone should do this for Canadians.
10. Who is John Mearsheimer and why does global politics love him? He’s “one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world.” The University of Chicago professor developed the idea of offensive realism, the interaction between great powers by their rational desire to achieve leadership over a region of the world. I’d never heard of him until this week, but I’m happy to learn more.
11. What I’m liking. Yuval Noah Harari who spoke to a packed Koerner Hall last week. Yes, he’s a prophet and a historian. But he’s also one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever heard, able to boil down fearsomely complex ideas into memorable bits and bytes digestible by all. Here’s part of his talk, with Matt Galloway on CBC.
12. Updates from last week. My essay against over-woke words missed some new very bad examples. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) called out British paint maker Farrow & Ball for using colours like “Au Lait” because that normalises the exploitation of cows; “Smoked Trout” and “Potted Shrimp” because fish are sentient, capable of feeling pain and fear. Said PETA: “We hope the Farrow & Ball range will soon be entirely vegan…” Farrow & Ball declined to comment.
Also, my list of new uses for old drugs did not include thalidomide, which seems to work well against cancer and leprosy.
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TANYA TALAGA IS LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY FROM OPENING OUR EYES TO CANADA’S INDIGENOUS HISTORY.
The Knowing reshapes our sense of Canada in a way only Tanya Talaga can.
The famed Anishinaabe journalist and Massey Lecturer reveals how all-embracing our mistreatment of our founding people was, and offers a way forward to real reconciliation.
Big new ideas like hers are rarely comfortable, and The Knowing is the big new book of the year. So it deserves a big hall to hear what’s vital to us all.
Tanya will also be interviewed by Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents. 
Date: Monday, September 23, 2024
Time: 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30 p.m) ET
Place: Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor St. West, Toronto, just west of the ROM
TICKETS HERE
Please pass this invitation on to like-minded friends and family.
Cheers,
Bob Ramsay
Presented in partnership with
