Season’s Greetings! It’s my favorite time of year, which means I’m currently out of the office chugging mugs of cocoa, stuffing my face with cookies, and attempting to fulfill my life-long goal of memorizing every single line of [FAVORITE HOLIDAY MOVIE]. 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 [NAME] at [EMAIL] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out. Happy ho-ho-holidays!
Readers, what do you like and hate in out-of-offices replies? Any stories of particularly off-key ones?
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No need to go into great detail that you're traveling to seven different European countries. Simply state whether you're on vacation, at a conference, or on a business trip. This will give the sender a general idea of whether you're be checking your email while you're out. "I'm currently on vacation/at a conference/on a business trip."
Something about it gets my goat up! Like she’s working and emailing me about things she wants me to work on, but her OOO is telling me to buzz off coz she’s too busy to get to my emails. Also she still has it set up and we’ve been in lockdown for over a week. How long does she intend to have her OOO triaging everything and making excuses for delays? We all know there’s a lockdown, that’s why everyone is scrambling for their events to be rescheduled – it just comes across as very self-important at a time where everyone is under stress. No one else in the organisation has this so it seems very bizarre to have an OOO while still working!
Save www.sysgen.com.ph http://www.sysgen.com.ph/articles/out-of-office-templates-for-the-holidays/2311 · Thank you for your email, I’m currently out of the office until [date]. I’ll reply to your message promptly when I return. Should you require immediate assistance, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email] in my absence. Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season,
Yeah, I do think some are pretty funny (eg tan lines) and some are not so terrible, but I honestly think she took them incredibly seriously and wasn’t trying to make her colleagues laugh as much as just ….. put out an air of “look how personable and authentic I am”. She also lamented that other people’s OOOs were “rigid” and why couldn’t people have fun?! Which again, sounds not so bad but was someone who would regularly ask prying inappropriate personal questions, so it came across less like “let’s loosen up” and more like “why won’t people tell me the specifics of why they’re off today, because I deserve to know”.
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Depending on the type of holiday, you can create specific templates for various holidays such as Christmas Thanksgiving, New Year etc.:
If you are going out of office but still leave something interesting for your contacts like poetry, that’s something really out of the box. This is a truly amazing OOO message, and reverting with poetry will surely make the receiver read it twice as emails are the last place one imagines reading poetries. Especially closing with “If all else fails, clear your cache…” is one good way of telling people that they will need proper help and it will anyway take time before they’re all set. Have a look at it here:
Our office VM sends an audio file to our email. I love it, because I can apply all the filing and prioritization functions of my email inbox to the voice messages. It’s the only way I ever check my VM. I don’t even remember how to listen to messages on my phone.
When you’ve finally powered your way through that seemingly endless to-do list and are ready to check out of work mode once and for all, there’s one final thing you need to take care of: setting your out-of-office response.
Not quite an OOO, but a former boss had an email signature that said she was doing field work so her email responses would be delayed.
Not an out of office, but I had a sign I used to put on my closed door whenever I was head down on something and didn’t want to be disturbed:
In an instant, you feel a weight lifted from your shoulders, and a choir of angels sing Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy around you as you skip out of the office. You gaze upon the masses of workers on the tram, smugly wondering if their out-of-office responses are on yet.
Our office will be closed on Monday, May 25th in observance of Memorial Day. We will reopen on Tuesday, May 26th at 8:00 a.m.
I don’t know what to say these days – I’m still working from home so “out of the office” doesn’t sound right any more, but ‘off work’ seems like too much? I’m probably way overthinking it but I’ve felt stuck every time I need to write one lately.
By the way, [Name], our [Title], will be giving a speech sharing unique experience in [field]. I think you’ll enjoy it.