Oh my gosh, this is funny! It does sound kinda like, “some things are more important than work, JAN.”
I’ve had several co-workers over the years use “at my earliest convenience” and it’s always rubbed me the wrong way. It just sounds kind of dismissive like, “I don’t care when you need it, I’ll get to it when I get to it.”
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Yep. I work with people all over the US so I have no idea who is at home or actually in the office.
One common challenge faced by customers is auto reply email or text messages lack a specification about the estimated wait time to get answers for their queries.
No one should be calling during the holidays, and yet some people do. When you’re out for the holidays, create a voicemail greeting that communicates the cheerfulness of the season while still staying professional.
Well, if you become too sick to work for longer than that, what happens then? Surely there’s some backup. If not, you’re not always going to be able to keep that promise.
One of our support champions will attend you shortly. You are [number] in the queue. Your wait time will be approximately [minutes]. Thank you. We appreciate your patience.
Something that actually was an issue with my employer ages ago: at one time there was a policy that out of office would only go to internal people, and nothing would be sent at all to anyone external. Apparently this was felt necessary in order to mitigate risk of burglary, so people wouldn’t know that “John Winchester has gone on a hunting trip” and that his house was empty.
3. Out of Office Email with Specific Dates Example. [Greeting] I will be out of the office starting (Starting Date) through (End Date) returning (Date of Return).
Website: https://www.themuse.com/advice/6-outofoffice-templates-for-the-holidays-that-you-can-copy-and-paste-now
Thankfully, setting this up in Gmail is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting your out-of-office message, plus some helpful examples you can steal for your own use:
My mom works part time at a library in archives, where her personal work email is also the general archives email (ie LibraryNameArchives @ email . com). She has an out of office response that replies with her work hours (since she’s the only employee in the archives) so people know when she’s in the library and can respond or when they can come in and visit her. The only frustrating thing is that her email either isn’t capable of, or she doesn’t know how to, turn off the OOO email when she’s actually in the office, or doesn’t trust that she’ll remember to turn it back on. She’ll send me an email about something, I’ll respond, I’ll get an OOO response, she’ll respond, I’ll reply, I get an OOO reply, etc etc.
Wow, it’s a bloody snooze fest over here! Just kidding, this option is the most appropriate for 95% of business out-of-office responses. It’s simple, no-nonsense, and tells people all they need to know.
I work for a Japanese company which has a regular rotation of engineers who come over for 2-4 years so we get some enjoyable translations for all manner of communication.
That’s what I always reasoned… better to annoy with too much information that saves hassle on the backend then be brief upfront and sentence people to OoO purgatory.
Here’s my pet peeve: OOOs that specifically state the person “won’t have access to email.” It contributes to this pervasive idea that an employee who might technically be ABLE to check her work email while OOO better have a damn good reason why she won’t be doing so. Which calls back to the reason someone’s OOO is no one else’s business. Whether you’re OOO because you’re on your honeymoon, having your gall bladder removed, or robbing a bank, OOO should automatically imply unavailability for work stuff. Full stop.
2. Include a GIF to make your auto-response more fun. Everyone can appreciate the excitement of pushing work aside to go on vacation. Bring this to life by linking to a GIF in your vacation responder message. Here’s an example out of office reply: Shoot, you just missed me.