> Maybe that's so in your organization. In mine, it's okay. Which is great, but I (for one) am not part of your organization so this does not hold.
How about this: every time I get up to go to the restroom or get a cup of coffee I'll let you know I won't be able to respond right away via email. Oh but you say but I'll only be gone for 5 minutes which is within the timeframe of an expected reply. Alrighty, at lunch I'm gone for a half hour so I'll just let you know then--oh and also when I go home for the day since I won't respond for *ouch* over 12 hours. Ridiculous, yes... I think the point you're missing here is that email is not a real-time or even near real-time way of messaging, unlike say IM or a phone call which are designed for anything important enough to need an immediate or near-immediate reply. In fact, the only job description that's ever somewhat convincingly argued against this is some kind of "account executive" role. However, the outside individual is then certainly in the address book which once again removes the perceived need to send unsolicited and unwanted automated responses outside the org. Instead of trying to justify, you'll be better off to just say (like so many others have) I'm gonna do it and you can't stop me; make a filter. Yay, I've got five languages in my filter now and I still get OOFs due to some languages having more than one way to say out-of-office and several hundred languages missing. So much for scalability... ~JasonG ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
