Off the clock

On a recent morning I received an email at 9.01am chasing up a press release from a few days earlier. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, but this was a Saturday morning. 

This was the message:

Hi Lisa ,

Just wanted to double check if this could be of interest ahead of the weekend?

Thanks

Jake

Putting aside the fact that Saturday morning doesn’t really count as ‘ahead of the weekend’, or the fact that the original release wasn’t enclosed so I had no idea to what it referred, or that I had never had any interaction with Jake before, in what world is it a good idea to chase up a journo on one of their precious days off?

I know, I know. It’s totally grinchy to say that – and if I really cared about my precious days off I wouldn’t be checking my emails, would I? But as editor of a magazine that publishes on a Saturday, I do keep an eye on comms in case something needs fixing or promoting.

If you use an automated system for sending out releases or follow-ups, do consider how it’ll be received. There’s certainly less traffic on a weekend and it might mean that your email is at the virtual ‘top of the pile’ come Monday morning but would you really be there to respond if someone pinged a reply straight back? I hope not. 

We all need down-time. The only times I’ve really broken the rules is when it’s someone too big to ignore – such as last weekend when Anna Wintour’s office got in touch to point out a minor inaccuracy in her cover story. No one says no to Anna, do they?!