Student emails at 3am Saturday morning, then is sends an email Sunday night, miffed you didn’t reply.
I didn’t actually put that in my maternity leave out-of-office, but it is what I did when I got back.
.
While injecting a little humor into your vacation email message can sometimes be a good idea – depending on your company and contacts – avoid oversharing and keep it professional at all times.
Have you ever received or written an out-of-office message that you really liked? If you’re up to sharing them, we’d love to see your favorites. Don’t forget to share this post with friends and colleagues!
This is [NAME’s] bot. [NAME] is indisposed and unable to respond to your email. I’m replying to let you know that she will return to her desk on [DATE]. It is her intent to attend to your request promptly at that time. Meanwhile, [NAME] leaves you with the following message.Please ponder its significance: “I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.” — [NAME]
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
Using autoresponder emails when you are not available at the office is a part of the professional communication between business associates. That said, you should be careful about the information you are sharing in your OOO messages.
You don’t have to stop using OOO messages. Instead, they need to be used wisely. It’s okay to suggest an alternate contact while you are unavailable or add a date when you will be back in action. Just skip the details about why you set up the out of office message. No one needs to know that your son is getting married in Paris. Remove any personal details in that message, including personal cell phone numbers or an alternate email where you can temporarily be reached.
Before we further discuss some of the examples of a good out of office message, decide for yourself what you want to get from it and what tone are you going to use.
But perhaps we have it all wrong, and are simply enslaving ourselves further to technology by toiling over OOOs that are personality-packed, marketing-friendly perfection. Maybe we need to be altogether more standoffish if we want to make our OOOs really work for us? NYU Professor Meredith Broussard, who’s the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, takes the inspiration for her OOO from US writer, poet and children’s author E.B. White, who once turned down an invitation from President Eisenhower with the words “I must decline, for secret reasons”. Accordingly, Broussard’s OOO reads simply: “I am out of the office, for secret reasons.”
I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.
If your request is urgent, don’t sit around. Send your request to [contact’s name] at [contact’s email].
For non-urgent inquiries, I will return your message as soon as I get back in the office.
Hey — you’ve reached my inbox, but hold on, the doorbell just rang. It’s the UPS driver. He’s loading me onto the truck. Dang, it’s stuffy in this truck with all these boxes. He’s taking me down to… Oh! Florida! And now I’m on the beach. Thanks, UPS driver!
Every November without fail, when I take a week off for deer season, I start my OOO with “GONE HUNTIN’!”
Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, I’m out of the office from [day/month] to [day/month] with limited/ no access to email. If your question can wait, I’ll be responding to any emails I miss when I return. If not, contact [Name] at [email] or [phone] and he/she will take care of your request.
Agreed. I think some people don’t analyze the individual words when they hear the phrase. It’s fine to say “please let me know at YOUR earliest convenience” but it’s weird to say “I’ll get back to you at MY earliest convenience.”