The Case of the 3:30 Emails

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A Subplot Straight Out of ‘Seinfeld’

Dear Work Friend,

My boss often neglects to respond to emails, even — or especially — when they are important or time-sensitive. It’s one of many ways in which she is perpetually behind. Recently, after a co-worker gently brought up an email that had been awaiting a response for weeks, we all started to finally receive backlogged email responses from her — at exactly 3:30 on Thursdays.

Our boss claims that there is a mysterious glitch causing some, but not all, of her emails to not send for days or weeks, and then to go out all at once at 3:30 on Thursdays. She makes awkward comments about her “3:30 emails”: In a recent one-on-one meeting, she sent me a document via email and then joked, “It might come through now, or it might come through several days from now at exactly 3:30. I don’t know why that keeps happening!”

The thing is, I’m almost certain that she is lying. I suspect she is catching up on old emails and then scheduling them to go out at that time to make it look like there is a glitch that is causing this to happen. What can my colleagues and I do about this — and about the larger pattern of her disorganization and strange, childish cover-ups?

— Anonymous

Your boss’s behavior is deeply unprofessional and extremely aggravating. However, and I hope you can hold space amid your frustration to appreciate this: It is also very funny. I wouldn’t say this entirely makes up for your inconvenience, but I’d like to think it offsets it a small amount. There are immature and unprepared supervisors at every workplace; only rarely do they provide material that will kill at parties for years to come.

In fact, your boss’s behavior is so funny and bizarre that I am tempted to suggest your best strategy is to play along by pretending you don’t get any of the emails she sends outside the Thursday 3:30 window. How often, after all, do you get a chance to live inside what is effectively a George Costanza subplot on “Seinfeld”? Raise the stakes! If she sends you an email in the middle of a meeting, simply claim you haven’t gotten it, and tell her you’ll follow up with her about it on Thursday at 3:35. She’s not doing her job, so why should you do yours? Surely, she would have no choice but to fold and start replying more promptly, or at least come up with a better excuse.

Alas. From what you’re saying about your boss, I worry this might trigger a feedback loop that results in your company’s collapse. Unless you’re willing to risk not just your job but the entire workplace, it’s probably not a good idea to fight unprofessionalism with more unprofessionalism.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/19/business/delayed-email-glitch.html