A. International House’s front desk will be open for students 24 hours each day throughout winter break, except on the holidays – Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. However, there will be professional staff on call 24 hours a day throughout the break to adequately serve students. The Front Desk may be contacted at 419.530.1600; this phone will be answered 24/7, even when the desk is closed on both holidays.
“some things are MORE important than work” definitely comes off as aggressive to me. “How DARE you email me when I’m doing something MORE IMPORTANT, and for that matter why aren’t YOU spending time with YOUR family?!”
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There ought to be a word - and perhaps there is, in German - for the mix of feelings that accompanies composing and activating a holiday out-of-office message. There's smugness, of course, and a gratifying sense of laying down one's virtual tools after a horribly long shift. But for many of us, these nice feelings are tempered by the knowledge that in two weeks, refreshed but depressed, we will have to trawl through hundreds of emails, many of which will be conference room notifications for meetings about crises that have passed.
I set mine for long meetings (half a day or a whole day) or if I’m traveling. I do have clients who email about time sensitive issues and it’s better for everyone if they know I might not see their message for a few hours.
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.
I think that’s maybe something you need to deal with internally with the person/people who you’re asking people to speak to instead – I think if you start to ask the original sender to update you or cc you then it’s going to start to annoy people that they are doing the running around, plus not everyone will do it.
Plus, he incorporated a delightful technique to let people know that if they really wanted him to read their emails, they should probably send them again after his return. Not only does that keep the sender accountable by saying, “If this is really important, you know when to reach me,” but it also helps him truly vacate his work while he’s away. And that’s hard to do. First, travel to my homeland of Florida. Climb to the highest peak of the tallest mountain. Find a rare flower (no specifics, of course… It’d be cheating). Put the flower back, because as the old hiking rule goes, “Leave everything as you found it.”
I’m guilty of the “pre-vacation warmip” email…but I send it on Wednesday so Last-minute Louie can contact me before I go out on Friday. (And it’s not all-office!)
This might seem obvious, but make sure you clearly state and restate the dates you’ll be out of the office. Even if you put the dates in your subject line, you should also repeat them in the message body. It’s hard to over-communicate here. State exactly when you’ll be back, and whether or not you’ll be responding to calls and emails while you’re out. If you’re on the road but are responding to messages, let everyone know if you’ll be unavailable for an extended period (while on a flight, for example), if you’ll be in a different time zone, and in general, that they should expect a delay in response time. All in all, set realistic expectations and strive to be as specific as possible.
15. "This is Bond. James Bond. Okay, it's really [your last name]. [Your first name] [your last name]. I'll get back to you as soon as I'm done helping M16 save the world — which will probably be tomorrow at the latest. Have a good day."
I personally always leave my employee as my contact because a) I trust her completely, b) I’d prefer people email her anyway, so this is nice practice, c) My boss is the CEO so please for the love of god don’t email him about your data entry issue, d) the people who are emailing me about sensitive things that my employee shouldn’t know about also know enough to have that discretion.
Crafting an out of office message can be plenty of fun and we're about to show you how with our Mad Libs version!
My employer uses Outlook and it has an option to display all OOO messages when you add the person into the To/CC/BCC fields of an email, prior to sending it. It’s pretty great and actually saves an email sometimes because I can see who I should contact and just go to them.
You just have to be very certain of your audience if you’re going to use an email with humor. It has to be the right tone, and it has to be right for your business and your clientele.
“When I got there and found out the bungee was 134 feet high I got terrible cold feet, but I felt that since I wrote it, I had to do it. So I did. It was terrifying and indeed a lesson on making bold claims in a public way!”
Confirm your greeting is set for each day you are closed to play the “holiday” or “closed” greeting. Check your on-call option is working properly, when applicable.
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