But your out-of-office message is as much for you as it is for the people receiving it, especially during the pandemic. “Boundaries have taken a big hit right now,” Ritter says. There’s a lot of pressure associated with missing something at work, and that stress has been heightened without the typical separation between office and home and with the added fear caused by an uncertain economy. An OOO message is a chance to set expectations, “to give yourself some breathing room and to ensure other people aren’t thinking negatively about you,” Ritter says, and it’s crucial for your mental health.
I saw a version of this on IG that was an old school (paper) OOO from an associate pastor. It has a line like “if this is an emergency and you must speak to someone, Jesus is always available on the mainline.” Too funny.
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*When a holiday falls on a Saturday, it is observed on the preceding day. (When the preceding day is also a holiday, both holidays are observed on preceding days.) When a holiday falls on a Sunday, it is observed on the following work day.
Email is one of the top tools for business communication. People expect swift responses to their requests. If this expectation will not be met because you are away from your desk, your client or colleague needs to know.
Hello, Thanks for reaching out to me. Unfortunately, I’m out of the office from [DATE] to [DATE] with limited / no access to email. If your query can wait, I’ll be responding to the emails I missed when I return on [DATE]. If not, contact [NAME] at [EMAIL] or [PHONE] and he/she will take care of you.
I think important context here is that no matter what the details added were, it always had this aggressive tone of “I’m taking a break and breaks are IMPORTANT”. Which I agree with, but it felt like it was almost aggressive/accusatory, and more importantly: this person was without a doubt the meanest, cruelest, least understanding and empathetic person I’ve ever worked with who ran her staff into the ground with urgent demands and expectations.
If it’s not important and you’re just a little bit bored then you can amuse yourself with these fun facts until I return. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red. Bananas are curved because they grow towards the sun. There are approximately 100,000 hairs on a human head. You can buy eel flavoured ice cream in Japan. A group of jellyfish is called a smack.
In this post, I’ll go over what an OOO message is and share some of the best examples I’ve found on Google, as well as a few from my coworkers).
2. Simple Autoreply Message #2. This is another simple “office closed for holiday” template you can use for your WordPress forms. Hi (specify the Name field id),
I read it as coming from a person who was overly frustrated with their regular OOO being ignored. It’s one of my pet peeves – the OOO clearly says I’m not there and to contact Bob, yet the sender continues to reply, never contacts Bob, then blows up at me when I return that their work is delayed. I would love to be able to send something like this message in the letter but it wouldn’t fly at my office.
Yeah, that’s all I need to know when I’m trying to contact someone who’s out. 1) When you’re coming back so I know if my issue can wait, and 2) Where to go if I decide that it can’t.
The season of good cheer is upon us and you can feel the anticipation in the air. Most of us will be taking at least some vacation, and we all want to get the most out of our time away. So before you re-post your standard out-of-office reply, stop and ask yourself: will the way you’ve written the message really help you do just that?
I’ve never been a fan of the ones where people basically say “I’m working, but super busy right now, so I won’t get to your email for X (hours, days, whatever). Like, are you THAT busy.
Here, we’ll go over what’s required in an out-of-office email responder or email greeting, as well as a few ways you can jazz up your out-of-office message (and potentially making your colleagues wish they thought this up first!)
Use your auto-response as an opportunity to connect your customers with a sales opportunity! Hey there, thanks for shopping Patagonia! We’ll respond to your message ASAP. While you wait, have you checked out or semi-annual sale? https://txt.st/PQBLPE
Click the cog and select ‘Automatic replies’Select ‘Send automatic replies’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘OK’
The big issue I have with the example in the post is that not only is it unnecessarily long-winded, but you have to listen through all the chattiness to get to the “here’s who to contact in a real emergency” part. The tone does rub me wrong, but I’m willing to roll with that as a personality/company culture thing.