ROSEMARY ABBOTT | National
EFFICIENCY OUTBREAK
An Auckland office employee has stunned colleagues today after using the Microsoft Outlook outage as an opportunity to actually complete several tasks instead of spending the day emailing people about them.
The 34-year-old office worker normally spends much of his working day firing emails back and forth between colleagues in Auckland and various regional offices around the country. Today however he was forced to take matters into his own hands by putting together this month’s update briefing on his own with no way of receiving tedious and unhelpful input from other team members.
“It was faster to do on my own and it achieved the same purpose, whatever that might be. And the annoying people in my team had no way of contacting me about it.”
With Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications experiencing widespread disruption, the employee reportedly found himself with no choice but to get on with the work.
“I actually finished something today without first sending six emails about how I was going to finish it. It’s kinda an odd feeling. Like surely I can’t just do something without email clarification?” he said, whilst still coming across as productive.
And rather than arranging a 45-minute Teams meeting to discuss an issue that could be resolved in five minutes, he just resolved it.
“There were a few moments where I instinctively reached for Outlook, but then I remembered I could just do the bloody task without someone confirming I could.”
Colleagues were left particularly stunned when the employee completed three outstanding jobs before lunchtime, including one that had been sitting in his inbox since August.
“I normally send something to the team, wait for someone to reply, then send another email asking for an update. But today I’ve just been doing things. There’s almost a genuine sense of achievement about my day”
At the time of publication, the Auckland man had reportedly moved everything on his “doing” list into his “done” list, leaving him with the unfamiliar challenge of finding something meaningful to do with his remaining three working hours.
He is expected to spend much of Monday sending and receiving all the emails that would have normally been sent today.
More to come.
