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I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I’m on holiday. I won’t be able to connect with you until [date]. However, there’s good news too: my colleague [Name] will help you with pleasure.
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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. (Source: Futureofworking.com)
I usually put my boss in my OOO, because if something is so urgent that it needs to be delegated RIGHT NOW then it’s urgent enough that my boss should know about it, and he’s also in the best position to know who on the team to delegate it to based on everyone’s workloads and what can be dropped. But the most likely result is that whoever is emailing me either waits for me to get back because it’s not that urgent or goes to the next/backup person based on our central documentation about who to contact for particular issues.
But for employees at Daimler things are a little different. Email these people while they are on holiday and you will get a message like this:
But you don’t need to write an instruction guide for people as though they’re incapable of solving their own problems without you.
I have a deep paranoia about out of office messages ever since a previous (bad) job. Every year I worked on a huge project that took nine months, and three separate weeks (or more) of that involved correcting, editing, and reviewing a dense 300 page document.
As 2020 winds down, lots of people (us included) will be out of the office celebrating the holidays with family and friends. Here are some really funny, clever and snarky out-of-office messages sent this year, courtesy of HubSpot Blogs (full article here).
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
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Education Details: Template #1 Out-Of-Office Old School Style: For those who want to keep it low key. Thank you for your email, I’m currently Out Of Office till
An out of office message is simply an automatic response to all incoming emails. You can set it up prior to leaving on vacation or taking a sick leave.
Yes, qualifiers can be helpful. Limited vs no email access, out of the office versus working off site, regular out of the office versus extended leave, etc.
My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it's only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …
Who talks like that? A blowhard, that’s who… I promise, gentle customer, you won’t hear garbage like that from me. I’ll tell you why I like Aviation… Because it tastes like somebody finally made a gin for everyone.
We’ve all been there. A balmy evening beckons and across the street a crowd is already spilling from the pub, fanning out across the pavement in summer dresses and rolled-up shirt sleeves. But as you frantically try to clear your desk for the weekend, every email you send prompts a suspiciously swift reply. Yes, it’s the dreaded out-of-office auto-response, set to tauntingly remind you of a world of leisure while simultaneously pushing it further from your reach.
I once had a coworker who attempted to put up an OOO for all of busy season that basically said “I’m busy with urgent deadlines, so please expect a delay in my response.” I think she was asked to take it down.