My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it’s only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …
I know I’m so late on this, but my FAVORITE one I’ve ever gotten was from one of my company’s Presidents (so a very high up muckity muck type).
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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.
The funny and charming email template below keeps the confidence of your colleagues with a list of things anyone who works in an office is thankful for. Of course, feel free to customize this list according to the quirks of your own workplace. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to reveal them.
I don’t need some fancy, forensic gin-juggler to tell me why I like something. Just keep it simple. And real happiness is about simplicity.
Before I implemented this system, I got *way* too many calls asking if so-and-so was out of the office that day when an OOO tells them that Bob will be back in three hours and to call Sue in the interim. The OOOs have reduced status check calls to practically zero, and the OOO preview pops up in our system as soon someone’s email is entered.
Would you please check the steps explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0jJwjpE87o.
Setting up an out of office email depends on each company and the emailing systems and inbox setting used. But, it's also possible to set up an automatic reply for Gmail accounts and, with the coronavirus pandemic seeing more people go freelance than ever before, we're going to outline exactly how to get that Gmail out of office setting up and running.
(Obviously, it wouldn’t fly in all cultures, but I do think this should be more normalised.)
If you require immediate assistance in my absence, please contact John on 0912345678 or [email protected]. He will be available to deal with your inquiry.
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This is one reason I rarely give a contact person. My company is terrible at communication, and not only could you easily be sent on a OOO chain, you could also be emailing someone who is out who didn’t even use OOO.
“We went to New Zealand and I informed everyone in my [out of office] that I was ‘bungee jumping in Queenstown’, which seemed like what I should do in Queenstown,” the reader said.
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!)
The ability to schedule your OOO replies was literally the best feature ever to come to Outlook, and it took way too long.
When you update your voicemail or turn on your email client’s out-of-office greeting, there are three basic things you must share in your message: When you’re leaving, when you plan on responding to your messages upon returning, and who they can contact if they need to talk to someone right away.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.