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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

> I saw someone talking about their mother recovering from cancer and going urgently into the office to respond to this email.

1. You’re out of the office on extended leave and you don’t have an auto-response set up?

2. You can’t access your email remotely, really?

> Why turn it into a big news story so that they can also log into their email for the first time in 150 years and reply with some BS?

Doge did not turn this into a big news story, news agencies did because they need to stir up shit to get clicks and sell ads. “Worker expected to respond to email” is not a news story to any sane person.

Also wtf are you talking about “log into their email for the first time in 150 years”. What job do you have where you do not need to check email every day? If you haven’t logged into your email in “150 years” we definitely need to can your ass because you are not doing anything.

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Does an auto-response count? Are you willing to bet your job and healthcare on whatever your answer to that is?

Plenty of federal employees do not have email access outside of their workplaces for a variety of reasons.

and

Musk has tweeted repeatedly about this, and even if he didn't an email threatening to auto-resign the entire federal workforce is going to cause a stir. This should be obvious to anyone.

So, it's a stupid idea and you support it and it's not even the real reason anyway.

And edit to address your edits: You appear to have forgotten that your claimed reason for this was to catch out people who don't check their emails. Now you're angry at me for suggesting these people exist, when my whole point was that if they exist this is a stupid way to catch them out.

Yes the point is to catch people who are not checking emails. This is like the single most basic primary function of a modern office job. If you can’t check emails you should be fired. You are not useful for office work.

It might be a language barrier but you seem to have trouble understanding basic points being made, or are pretending not to understand because your point was illogical. So I'll repeat my point one more time and then give up:

This is a stupid and ineffective way to catch out people who don't read their email.

It’s obviously quite effective or all the people who are not checking their email would not be crying all over the Internet about how they’re going to get caught by it.

Literally send any reply. Elon was even replying to tweets about people sending AI generated replies saying that would be fine.

It is less effort than your multiple replies to me explaining why people should not have to answer their work email.

You're really missing the point.

It's not that replying to the email is hard. That's never been the point. The point is that you got a new boss, and his new best friend who doesn't work for the company just sent you an email that says "Tell me 5 things you did last week or you're fired, also feel free to bullshit it or make an AI reply, lol". It's stupidly unprofessional and disrespectful, and not the way the company should run.

Replying to an email is easy. Replying to an email by an outsider who is threatening to fire you is bullshit.

> 2. You can’t access your email remotely, really?

No. I do not have work email on my phone. You have had some awful jobs based on what you are saying here.

I’ve had some very fine jobs, but they did involve people counting on me to do work. I guess if you never did anything that mattered that can seem like a burden.

My job relies on me to do work and I set boundaries with my job. After my work is done, I am offline. In the case of an emergency, they know my phone number but I am not responding to each and every email after hours.

There was a 48 hour deadline. Nobody was expected to respond outside work hours.

A 48 hour deadline is abysmal. I've been sick for more than 48 hours before. Haven't you ever been off work for more than 48 hours at a time?

Set up auto reply. No I have never been physically incapable of checking email for 48 hours.

How is an auto-reply going to save you when you were supposed to fill out a list of 5 specific items or be fired?

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