Autoresponder problem with boss

[c-m]

I work in PR/Copywriting/Web development.

I gave the autoresponder a try, without asking for permission of course.

My company director, then asked the office manager to remove the autoresponder without telling me. lol

Where do you go from there?

I still only check mail at 12 and 4 but of course now my clients are not aware.

[kamakiri]

Auto responders are less than worthless when used improperly, and you clearly were using it inappropriately. Seriously man. If you are checking your email twice a day they just aren't necessary and create spam and ill will. Dont shoot yourself in the foot.

[c-m]

Fair point. I wouldn't say it was used inappropriately at all, in fact the day or two it was active it worked very well.

It was more of a test than anything.

Lol my boss is pretty worthless though, I have been there almost a year and have seen over 6 people hired and fired within a week. Its a small comapany probably set up for her by her husband, she hasn't worked in an office before being a writer

[kamakiri]

I chuckled at that. You might be the only one who thinks it wasn't used inappropriately.

[sadu]

I didn't like the idea of an autoresponder (seemed inappropriate) so I opted for it's less-offensive cousin which is a customised email footer.

Put your message into your email signature, and scale back slowly. If you deal with the same people regularly, after a month or 2 they will all get to see your message but without the nastiness of the autoresponder.

The key to making the email-weaning thing working os to do it slowly and train your customers' expectations. Train them so that they don't expect a response within an hour and the rest is easy. This doesn't happen overnight, so take it slow and try not to rock the boat too much.

[webgal]

I don't think you need an autoresponder if you check twice per day. So I wouldn't worry about it.

[Revv23]

In my opinion an autoresponder makes you look like an ass. I would have done the same thing if I was your boss; esp. If i sent you multiple emails at once and then got multiple autoresponds back.

I think the best way to do it is to simply only respond to E-mails twice a day - make sure you keep your production up, then if/when your boss asks you about it, explain that you are too busy doing projects he has asked you to do to answer an email every 15 seconds. You really have to make sure your production is up to do this.

[kamakiri]

Right on Revv. I couldn't have said it better myself. That was one of the worst suggestions in the book.

An interesting foot note though: gmail took 99% of what is broken out of auto responders. When you use the gmail auto responder, it logs the emails sent and only sends out an auto reply once every 4 days to the same address. Far better than the instant inane reply to every email sent.

[sadu]

I met up recently with an old friend and we got to talking about email and stuff.

He started telling me this story about a coworker who suddenly went all weird - this guy apparently started using an autoresponder that said he would only be checking email at 11am and 4pm and he also put all his calls straight to voicemail. My friend couldn't figure out what kind of crack this co-worker was snorting and figured he was about to get a giant kick from the boss.

Sound familiar?

As mentioned by others, it's very easy to look like an ass if you change too much too quickly. If your pointy haired boss is demanding replies every 15 mins then your first goal should be to train him/her to expect them every hour, not 2x a day. Small changes are easier to sell.

[kamakiri]

There is a well know pizza supplier who flaked out in the same way. He outsourced posting on pizza forums, abused mailing lists, quit going into his company, and eventually sold it to move to China.

There was a guy who was on the board for a few days a while back who couldn't figure out why his boss wanted to talk to him after taking the afternoon off to work from home. The bottom line here is that however much it seems that you are avoiding responsability, living the 4HWW requires a whole lot more responsability than the 50HWW, because you need to be accountable to yourself, the easiest person in the room to fool.