Employee leaves vacation greeting on voice mail for 18 months
Detroit, MI. 9/4/2006 - John Smith works at large American auto manufacture. Like most of his coworkers, when Mr. Smith went on vacation he always updated his voice mail greeting with a notice of his time off and contact assistance for while he was out. Also like most of his coworkers, Mr. Smith used to always immediately remove his vacation voice mail greeting when ever he returned to work.
A while back Mr. Smith decided to break the mold and see how long he could leave his vacation greeting on his voice mail after he returned from his annual winter vacation. Eighteen months later now, Mr. Smith believes he has set a record for consecutive days of leaving his vacation greeting on his voice mail. This idea first came to him when he called a coworker on a Friday and her voice mail greeting still said she was on vacation even though he knew she had returned that previous Monday.
Ever since that defining moment, Mr. Smith’s voice mail greeting has remained unchanged. The results of this experiment have been positive. Mr. Smith told Red Tractor USA, “I receive fewer phone calls than I used to, less solicitations, fewer assignments from my bosses and less complaints from customers.” Mr. Smith also noted, “Provided that your greeting is generic in terms of dates that you are off, when you are actually off, you do not need to worry about changing your greeting anymore.”
As far as he can tell, most of his eleven bosses think he is on vacation. According to Mr. Smith, “I have been both pleased and some times shocked by the results of this tactic. At times I think the success of this is directly related to the large scale bureaucracy of our company.”
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