If you need immediate assistance during my absence, please contact (Contact Person with email and phone). Upon my return, I will reply to your emails in a timely manner.
Your email is important to me and I will respond when I return to my desk. If you require immediate assistance, please contact [Alternate Name] at [alternate email].
.
This makes a lot of sense to me, since surely in the 3-4 months people tend take as leave in the US, your issue would have been resolved. Also for parental leave, most people delegate ongoing projects to some specific person, so anything that’s still going to be going on months from now when you return is getting handled by someone else.
Vacation Tracker helped me book some days off, so you will not be able to reach me until *date*! I will be busy surfing the waves in Portugal/ climbing Kilimanjaro/ taking pictures on the Great Wall of China/ exploring wildlife in Tanzania.
The one from “Central Intelligence” with the Rock that I love is is (paraphrasing) :
My phone just sits there gathering dust, so the only OOO message I need is the one I put in my email. Something like “I’ll read my email again on X. If you need assistance before then, please contact my colleague NN.”
We have all been there, hitting your head against the wall, trying to come up with something professional yet with a personal touch so you don’t sound like a robot. The faster you are done with it, the faster you can run away from work. Think think think!
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I do find the above quite amusing, but it would never fly at my place of work! lol!
One of the most common mistakes people make when setting up their auto replies is making them long. Nobody wants to read a long email message — and especially so when it’s an email message that tells them you’re not going to reply right now.
Hijacking this with a question- what do you do when you no longer have an co-workers to serve as an out of office contact? I find myself putting up the OOO less and less, because there’s no one left to respond to anything in my absence (beyond my supervisor who has no knowledge of how to do the tasks of my job).
Perhaps I’m you guys’ worst nightmare, but for the past couple of years I’ve been writing haikus for my OOO, which give a flavour of what I’m out doing. A couple of examples:
I used to work with someone who had a message telling people she only checked her email twice a day. You pretty much needed to call her if you needed anything outside of those times. (She worked in a remote office.) I think she had read one of those books on efficiency that recommended scheduled email time. But there were problems with this: 4. My department often had to email attachments or text to illustrate our questions/concerns. And we were on deadlines. Reading a page of text over the phone was not an efficient use of anyone’s time 5. She did outreach & was often out of the office on site visits, trainings, or travel to these places, but never ever set her OOO for these, because she was “working.” However, she was effectively not available to read emails from other staff until after hours on those days.
I'm out of the office enjoying the holidays until [date]. I'll respond as quickly as I can when the festivities are over and I'm back at my desk. If your request is urgent, please reach out to my colleague, [name], at [email], for assistance.
On the funnier side, my vacations tend to be trips to either see my favorite band in far flung places or going to conventions for my hobby, so for a while I added a checklist at the end of my OOO that said:
I am off for the week on a beach, proving myself that science is right when it says sharks attacks are rare. I will be safe to get back to you but your email may get swallowed by my inbox. Please add all finished lists on the board as you can see John if you have any questions. If it’s urgent send to [email protected] and if you are just bored, here are some facts to know,
Do you know what we’re doing too much of? We’re working too much, and we think too seriously about ourselves while doing it. That’s why including a joke or something fun in your out of office message could be so powerful.