This person decided that setting their out-of-office message was a prime time to settle an ongoing office argument about which Die Hard film is the best, complete with an integrated poll to add a little festive cheer to the auto-reply.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.

Thank you for your email. Our offices are closed until [date]. If it’s something you need urgent assistance, Contact [Name] on [phone number] or [Email]
I wrote the above comment off the top of my head. I wish I had time to rewrite and edit it. I would have changed “their goldfish” to “a spider they accidentally stepped on”, and would have added more detail to the story of the sister’s death (e.g. “her Pomeranian yapping” rather than the less descriptive “her dog barking”). Unfortunately, I could not do the thorough writing job required for that comment because someone close to me recently … – The person whose out of office advertised his gig on the weekend, for anyone in travelling to [city] – The people in a certain department who have taken to saying things like “if you really need to contact me, call 000-YYY-XXXX where Y is the square root of [insert numbers] and X is the year plutonium was discovered.” – The ones where people have an auto response saying they only check their emails once a day between 1-2pm – “I’m on research leave and I may be slow to reply.” (Whereby it is guaranteed they will reply immediately, because academics do not *really* take breaks).