A literary agent I follow told the story of a long argument her autoreply had with a would-be author. She’d set up the outbound email while out of town and apparently an author who queried her with his book took offense to it. He replied back in frustration that he didn’t get a personal response. Her autoreply sent back another automated message, which he then in increasing anger kept responding to.
Wow- that is rude of her. If you have a phone, you should have voicemail! It’s unprofessional (or at least inconsiderate) to have a mode of contact that just says “sorry, I know you already contacted me, but I want you to contact me again a different way”. Especially if she’s out of the office it doesn’t make sense to turn it off. The entire point of voicemail is so you can listen to the messages when you return…
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How to turn on "Automatic Replies (Out of Office)" or the "Out of Office Assistant" Click the File tab, and then click the Info tab in the menu. Click Automatic Replies (Out of Office). In the Automatic Replies dialog box, select the Send Automatic Replies check box. How do you include a holiday in an email?
I hate when senders ignore the instructions in my OOO message. Usually, my message is something simple like: “I am out [Dates], returning to the office [Date]. Please contact Jane (jane’s email address) in my absence. General [department] questions may be sent to [general dept email address].” To me that says if you are sending me anything then I won’t see it until I return. If you have something you need to be resolved right away, you can contact Jane or send it to our department inbox (where it should be going anyway).
I can see why you’d have a negative reaction to it–that’s how I felt the first several times I heard about these kinds of emails–but I don’t think it’s actually rude (unless they’re saying “if I get emails from Ali G, I’m deleting them”). The wording of the email can be rude, but the general concept of this kind of email isn’t.
Running away from your inbox or your work responsibilities doesn’t solve problems, it merely delays them. What boyd suggests, though, is something different. Her strategy asks us plan ahead of time: to construct an off ramp from our jobs as well as an on-ramp for the eventual re-entry. Her asks aren’t Herculean but they require some foresight — and they demand that a person be very upfront about what they want from their time off, and that they commit to protecting their time.
If I got an OoO just to tell me to have a good day, I would find that person and throw water on their computer. They’re obviously not qualified to operate one.
The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:
Thank you for calling [Company Name]; we are currently closed in observance of [holiday name]. We will return on [Date] at 8 AM Eastern Time. If you would like to reach our Dial by Name Directory, please press 1. To leave a voicemail, please press 2. A representative will contact you upon our return. To repeat this menu, please press the # key. [If no response after a few seconds] Goodbye. Voicemail Greeting
Q. If I must be on Main Campus and have been pre-approved by leadership to work during winter break, will there be lights and heating in my building?
I will return with a glowing tan on [insert date] and respond promptly to all emails. If your request is time sensitive, please email [insert name] at [insert email].
Two to three sentences is usually enough to tell recipients everything they need to know.
However, I will be taking periodic breaks from binge-watching everything I’ve missed to check my email [once per day/every evening/occasionally] while I’m away.
I wrote the above comment off the top of my head. I wish I had time to rewrite and edit it. I would have changed “their goldfish” to “a spider they accidentally stepped on”, and would have added more detail to the story of the sister’s death (e.g. “her Pomeranian yapping” rather than the less descriptive “her dog barking”). Unfortunately, I could not do the thorough writing job required for that comment because someone close to me recently … – The person whose out of office advertised his gig on the weekend, for anyone in travelling to [city] – The people in a certain department who have taken to saying things like “if you really need to contact me, call 000-YYY-XXXX where Y is the square root of [insert numbers] and X is the year plutonium was discovered.” – The ones where people have an auto response saying they only check their emails once a day between 1-2pm – “I’m on research leave and I may be slow to reply.” (Whereby it is guaranteed they will reply immediately, because academics do not *really* take breaks).
8) I am currently out of the office. I have a cell phone, but I will not be giving the number out. If you can guess the number, however, I will take your call.
Please note that employees should not be on campus during the closure without the permission of the relevant vice president or dean to ensure we achieve the goal of decreasing the density of campus.
No matter what you’re using your SMS autoresponder for, there are a few pieces of best practice you should keep in mind when crafting an automated text message.