We had someone today that sent an inquiry about something (this person is not a client, more of an outside business partner). Dude sent, within about an hour and a half time frame, 7 emails. Calling out one person on the DL multiple times within a half hour, then proceeding to call out the rest of the DLs (ALL in the original copy list) to try to get an answer to his question.
I’ve seen similar things with OOO messages where people would update them practically daily. “I’ll be away from my desk from 9-2 with intermittent emails and then on a call from 3:-3:45” and ….dude. We don’t need that much detail every day.
.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently on holiday with my family for the first time in what seems like forever. For urgent matters, [NAME] will help you. She doesn’t have a cape, but she is basically Superwoman. See you real soon.
‘Karen’ is his executive assistant. Who he really should have had craft that OOO message.
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I thought it was cute and could tell that the person writing it probably spent a lot of time on the road and needed a shorthand for updating their message.
I do feel like the person who wrote it may have some issues in their organization with, oh let’s call it fire fighting. People who don’t necessarily think through the process of who would be most effective at dealing with the problem at hand. This reads like the message of someone who is used to getting everything dumped in their email and this OOO is an attempt to manage expectations and distribute issues to the people most able to quickly and effectively deal with a range of problems
we had something similar at one phone-heavy place I used to work and it was actually extremely useful – everyone set their voicemail when they got in, and people would include if they were offsite (so worth ringing their mobile) or likely to be otherwise unreachable, and who to contact if your query was urgent. only took a minute to set, and was super useful to me as someone who had to talk to maybe 10-20 people on the phone in a day.
If it’s anything less than a business day, it just becomes this extra beacon of our completely toxic and out of whack work culture that insists we be reachable every second.
Amanda works at HubSpot, and she came with a unique auto respondent that asked her contacts to guess where she is. To give background, she flew down to Boston to attend a Red Sox training game in the spring with her father. She chose to ask her contacts whether where they think she might be, and also this played some wonderful use of litotes here:
Website: https://smartonhold.com.au/business-christmas-message-script-request-2/
If your email client allows it, you could always just use an image to express your out-office sentiment, like this one. After all, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words — and visual content is still essential to successful marketing.
One of our support champions will attend you shortly. You are [number] in the queue. Your wait time will be approximately [minutes]. Thank you. We appreciate your patience.
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I use a basic OOO message – “Hi! I’m out of the office x date(s). I will return your email when I’m back at my computer on x date. If you have an urgent matter, please contact x or y. Have a nice weekend/holiday/etc!/Thanks!” My office WANTS us to use more personal and witty OOO messages like this article’s message. And that stresses me out. I don’t want to spend time worried about whether my OOO is witty. I don’t want to annoy other people just looking for basic info like when am I back and who they can contact in the meantime. I correspond a lot with third parties on serious matters (legal), and I don’t think a message like that is appropriate. So, I just keep using my basic message and hope my supervisor’s supervisor doesn’t email me and see that I’m not “trying.” Ugh.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
Same, and I leave this template in my settings so all I have to do is change the date. Simple, to the point, and no one can say they didn’t know what to do while I was out.