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.
If you’re not sure when you’ll return, don’t include dates. Simply direct them to a colleague.
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I do this, too, especially if I’m out for longer than a day or two. I like giving myself a bit of breathing room to dig out of the inbox.
I pretty much never pay attention to out of office replies, just note if there is one. If I really need something urgently I’ll look to see if there’s another person’s contact info, but it’s rarely that urgent. I might also look for a return date, if that matters to me. It would annoy me if I had to wade through a wall of text to find either of those things.
There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
I’ve named the conference I was attending a couple of times in my out of office. That particular conference is a big enough deal in my field that some of the people emailing me were probably also in attendance, which made it worth specifying, in addition to setting expectations about email response times and overall availability.
If you’re taking a few days off and want to respond only to urgent emails, this template would be a great fit.
250? That could easily be only 2-3 days of emails. You can’t declare “email bankruptcy” for only a few days worth of emails. I average about 200 a day, so if I was on vaca and came back to only 250 mails, I would be putting in a ticket with IT, thinking something was broken.
Thank you for your correspondence. I am currently away from my computer and may be delayed in my response.
i’m just waiting for the inevitable “Believe it or not, ___ isn’t at work. where could i beeee?” a la Seinfeld
1) I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position.
I’m currently out of the office for the holidays. While you are reading this response, I am probably: Trying not to laugh at my [relative’s] corny jokes Trying not to get pissed at my [relative] asking me why I still don’t have a boy/girlfriend Attempting to explain my career to my [relative] for the 800th time Trying not to get hungry (I’m probably busy stuffing my face with cookies)
The head of llama engagement called my boss and reamed her out for my “poor behaviour” and then called me and reamed me out, too. She said it didn’t matter if project X was the biggest thing our company did all year – her requests took precedence.
I’ll be back in front of my computer on [date] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out.
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Mine said this when I was in the hospital and I didn’t know if I’d be back in two weeks or six.
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