PS: We love our downtime and here at HAR, we're big believers everyone needs a vacay from work. Yes, even you—the social media junkies, the workaholics, the entrepreneurial diehards who accidentally (or "accidentally") take their smartphone into the shower.
It was a commodities trading firm. I still barely know what they do. But, I would answer the phone, listen to whatever they said, understand not much and then I would say “lemme put you on hold” and then I would turn to the nearest person not on the phone and I’d say something dumb like “They’re calling about like…salt maybe?” And then I’d transfer to that person and they would figure out who it went to. (They all knew who was trading what that day. Nobody ever told me.)
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5.) Sehr geehrte Kunden, unser Büro ist vom 24 Dezember bis zum 2.Januar nicht besetzt. Sie erreichen uns wie gewohnt ab Montag den 5. Januar. Wir wünschen Ihnen und Ihrer Familie ein frohes Weihnachtsfest und ein gutes und erfolgreiches neue Jahr.
An out of office message is a compact text that conveys the most important facts:
Well, but as others have pointed out, that depends on the part-time job and the industry. If you don’t work Tuesdays and Thursdays, but those are considered standard hours in your business, clients or other folks outside the office might email you on Tuesday morning with something important, not hear back and not know why — and get irritated. If they get an OOO, they now know what to expect or they have a backup option if the matter is urgent.
Tested to/from 2 iPhones (1 personal/1 work phone) and neither of them receive the designated Auto Reply Text. What am I doing wrong?
When you have to be away from work even for a day, you have to add an out of office message so the person who is looking for you will know that you will delay with your answer or to know who else can contact you.
i’m just waiting for the inevitable “Believe it or not, ___ isn’t at work. where could i beeee?” a la Seinfeld
Ha – I didn’t watch the video but still definitely get the condescension! It’s a LOT of extra explaining and direction when something like, “if you need immediate assistance, please contact Fergus at…” will do. In my opinion, cutesy stuff like this is mildly entertaining at the beginning but gets dumb/annoying shortly thereafter. Not just with OOO messages, but other instances where companies try to make being “cool/funny/laid back” parts of their brand in really obvious ways.
Oh my gosh, yes! This also drives me crazy. The game of emailing 15 people because they are all out and pointing to each other as their back up. Infuriating.
Website: https://www.snaprecordings.com/blog/preparing-your-business-messaging-for-covid-19-impact
If you work in an international setting, you should eventually prepare an out-of-office message in English to notify people of your absence and tell the recipient who to contact in case they need an immediate response.
Not an OOO issue but the comment about PTSD from OldJob reminded me of this. I am a recreational sailor who often made longer offshore trips as my vacation. OldBoss INSISTED that we provide contact instructions. Mine was some variant of “Dial O and ask for the Marine Operator. Give them [name of boat], [call sign] and [approximate location by date] along with your name and credit card number. We will be monitoring Channel 16 at these times…..” Never got a call. Word spread and there was a sudden epidemic of sailing vacations in my office!
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).
Labor Day 2013 – Brand Constructors. Out of office message examples. More general requests can be emailed to. If your message is time sensitive, use urgent in your subject line so i know to reply by the end of the business day. Festive out of office holiday messages provide you with a creative approach to tailor your automated email message to a specific holiday.
But that sounds boring, right? Luckily, there are ways to spice up your OOO message by adding humor in just the right places.
My mother who is still working at 70 has the best out of office emails. As a nervous millennial I tend to be like ‘hi I’m having surgery but will still be checking my emails’ and hers are just ‘I’m taking a break from work. Be back June 2″