职场老手:不回邮件的新借口

Last week I received an automatic reply from a man I had tried to contact saying  he was “away from the office with limited access to email”. I ignored it.
不久前我收到了一封自动回复的电子邮件，来自一个我曾试图联系过的人。信中称，他“不在办公室，不方便使用电子邮件”。我对此选择了无视。

The same day Adam Parker, head of US equity research at Morgan Stanley, received a similar message, only he didn’t ignore it. He sent out a cri de coeur to all clients, explaining that it was his job to interpret the world for them and he was ruling that the “limited access to email” excuse was baloney. There is virtually nowhere left on earth, he pointed out, unreachable by email. What the phrase actually means is: I’m feeling tired or lazy and think I’ve earned the right not to reply.
就在同一天，摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的美国股票市场研究主管亚当•帕克(Adam Parker)也收到了一封类似的邮件，只不过他没有选择无视。他向所有客户发出了一封表示强烈抗议的邮件，信中说，为客户阐释这个世界是他的工作，在他看来，“不方便使用电子邮件”的借口简直扯淡。他指出，在这个地球上，其实没有什么地方是电子邮件到达不了的。“不方便使用电子邮件”的言下之意是：我累了或犯懒了，并认为我已经有权不回复邮件了。

Mr Parker is right – this excuse does not work any more. But he is wrong to be so disapproving about it. We all are sometimes tired or lazy or on holiday or otherwise disinclined to do something we have been asked to do. What we need are better excuses.
帕克是对的——这种借口已经不再管用了。但他不应该如此不满。每个人都难免有时会因为疲倦、或犯懒，或正在度假，或其他原因，而不想去做他人要求我们做的事。我们所需要的不过是更好的借口。

The problem is that technology is steadily ruining all the old favourites. “The cheque’s in the post” doesn’t work now that no one writes cheques any more. “The dog ate my homework”, a little fragile at the best of times, works even less well now that so much homework is done online. “The boiler has exploded and I’m waiting for the plumber” is hopeless, since – provided the laptop didn’t also explode – you can work at home.
问题在于，技术的进步使得人们过去常用的各种借口都逐渐失效。“支票在邮局”这招已经不管用了，因为已经没有人再使用支票。“我的作业被狗吃了”，这个借口在最容易取信的时候都有点不可信，而如今很多家庭作业都在网上完成，这个理由就更不管用了。“锅炉爆炸了，我在等水管工来修”，这个借口简直无可救药，因为只要你的笔记本电脑没有跟着爆炸，你完全可以在家工作。

Even the new excuses created by technology are starting to look threadbare. “Your email must have got caught in the spam filter” is a handy white lie that I have often used to get me out of scrapes, but as filters go on getting better its value is diminishing.
即便是技术创造出的新借口也开始显得老套。“你的邮件一定是被垃圾邮件过滤器拦截了”，这个方便的善意谎言是我常常用来为自己解围的，但随着垃圾邮件过滤器变得越来越精准，这一招也越来越不灵了。

So which excuses do still work?
那么还有哪些借口仍然管用呢？

A trusty standby is to say you are too busy – which has the added bonus of making you look important. “Terribly sorry I didn’t reply, I’ve been snowed under”: I used to use this a lot, but am trying to wean myself off it. For a start, I’ve noticed really important people never send out messages saying they are snowed under. Moreover, practically everyone thinks they are busy (although, as I pointed out recently, none of us is as busy as we fancy ourselves to be). To plead busyness does not suggest you are important. It suggests you are inefficient.
一个可信的应急办法是说自己太忙了——这还能带来一项额外好处，就是让自己显得重要。“非常抱歉我之前没能回复邮件，我忙晕了”：这个借口我以前经常用，但我正试图克制自己不再使用这一招。首先，我发现，真正重要的人物从来不会发邮件声称他们忙得昏天黑地。此外，几乎每一个人都认为自己很忙（虽然正如我最近指出的那样，其实每个人都没有自己想象的那么忙）。以忙为借口并不能凸显你地位重要，反而显得你效率低下。