Want to offer these fun out of office mad libs to your clients? You're in luck! We created customizable form templates of these mad libs for you to copy - for FREE! Check out our Free Travel Agent Forms article for how to get them through JotForm and for more free travel agent forms!
Please note that all our branches will be closed from [date] to [date]. We will reopen on [date]. We wish you all the best holiday!
.
Yes, this, and when people use OOO message as a “do not disturb” but then email you back right away. That’s not how OOO or email works!
I will be out of the office this week. If you need immediate assistance while I’m away, please email (Contact Email Address).
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
I still will get urgent messages from coworkers with multiple follow-ups during my OOO period. Then an angry call or email when I return that the response time was too long. When I check with Jane about the status she says she was never contacted about the issue. I always push back “Why didn’t you contact Jane?” but I think a lot of people in my organization like to shift blame when they are behind on their deadlines. If it was really so urgent, why did you wait a week just to get an answer from me?
When one of my colleagues went on vacation, he sent an out-of-office message that was both clever and smart. First, he sent the recipient on an imaginary scavenger hunt to “the highest peak of the tallest mountain.” He used humorous absurdity to make it clear that he would not be checking email while he was away.
This seems like information that would be better in an email signature than an OOO, really. That’s how my organisation does it.
That’s also annoying because if it’s not someone I interact with regularly I will wonder if it’s been left on by accident.
Note: For Outlook 2007, to turn off out-of-office replies, select Tools > Out of Office Assistant and uncheck the Send Out of Office auto-replies checkbox.
AppsArticlesBest ofBooksGearIntention and AttentionMode-Based WorkRoutinesThe PodcastTime Theming
Every time the grocery store clerk asks, “Would you like to donate to breast cancer?” I have to bite my tongue.
The idea for this one is to pick your favourite Christmas carol and repurpose it for your out-of-office response. It’s festive and sure to get a laugh! (Whatever you do, just don’t pick Baby It’s Cold Outside).
By knowing more about your activities, customers are more likely to trust your company. In turn, your company’s outreach increases.
10. Office Closed for Annual Vacation. Use this template for your annual year-end vacation. Hi (specify the Name field id), I am out of the office for my annual year-end vacation and will not be able to check my mail until after the New Year.
The reason I did it was that the first time I took maternity leave, I came back to thousands of irrelevant emails. It was a chore to sort through them, and finding the ones that were still relevant was like finding a needle in a haystack. And it wasn’t just a waste of *my* time – I often had to reach out to email senders only to hear that no further action was needed, so I was wasting their time too.
Yes! I hate the “at my earliest convenience” for the same reason – it comes across as “I’ll do it when I feel like it”. I would only use that phrase at work in terms of someone else (ie “at YOUR earliest convenience”).