Permission not to answer

Egypt's spring holiday, and Cairo is on the water. Coloured eggs, spring onions, a patch of grass by the river, and the phone in a pocket.

Riyadh and Dubai are at their desks, because Monday is a working day in both and the holiday is only Egyptian. So the message comes anyway.

Sit on the junior's side of that. The handbook says a public holiday is a public holiday. Nobody senior would ever say answer it, and in every office I have sat in nobody senior has had to. Meanwhile a client message is sitting in a group thread of a dozen people, seen, with the most senior name in it not replying.

That last part is the only fact in the situation that matters.

If the reply comes from the top of the thread inside four minutes, the boundary is gone, and no policy will bring it back. Everybody in that group now knows the holiday is a courtesy extended to people junior enough to take it. Next year they answer before anyone asks, because being the one who did not answer is a risk they cannot price, and being the one who did costs nothing.

If nothing comes back until Tuesday, and that reply carries no apology, that is the entire policy, delivered in a way a document never manages.

Email at least has a mechanism. Messaging has none: no out-of-office on a chat thread, no bounce, no grey line saying this person is away until tomorrow. There is only what people do, in front of everybody in the thread.

So the cost of the boundary sits with the person who can most afford it, and the benefit goes to the people who cannot. Until the senior name stays quiet, nobody below them is able to.