The people who never change their holiday OOO message or only include half the information, if you’re lucky. I had one sent to me once that was along the lines of “I’m on holiday until August 12th and then again from August 24th.”
The response on Twitter has also been overwhelmingly positive. "I love Daimler's approach to holiday email," says the entrepreneur Nuno Almeida, while the FT's Hanna Kuchler tweets: "Now this is email management."
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I say I’m off-duty, or in non-working status, but I come from a DOD background. I no longer like to say out of the office. Unavailable is good too.
Your ooo also serves to let people know when they can expect you to reply yourself. If that’s not a concern, then I guess you don’t need one.
In case of pressing issues that need urgent attention, feel free to reach out to [CO-WORKER NAME]. Give them a call on [PHONE NUMBER] or send a message to [CO-WORKER EMAIL].
I will be out of the office until *date*. My colleague *Name* will be happy to assist you.
How about warning people of what’s to come? Take a look at an example you can use below.
Dear Customer, Our office is closed and you can expect to hear back from me by [date]. Have a great holiday! Regards [Name/signature]
I am out of the office July 15–25. In the event of an emergency, please contact Yuko Kawakami at [email protected].
In 2013, researcher danah boyd wrote a LinkedIn blog post advocating for the nuclear option which was framed in the piece as an “email sabbatical.” Coming back to an empty inbox after a vacation is should be a break from the insanity, not a procrastination of it,” boyd wrote of the decision to send everything to the trash.
I just say “following my return to the office” because saying “as soon as possible” isn’t actually when I’m going to respond — I may have other priorities when I get back that take precedence over responding to a week old email that wasn’t important enough for them to contact my backup. That said, it doesn’t bother me when other people do it!
I had a voicemail greeting like that in High School!! I can’t imagine an adult having that kind of VM greeting; it would definitely annoy me coming from anyone older than like 20.
The best solution, in my experience, is for the person covering your work to cc’ you on responses to the forwarded request. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain* June 3, 2021 at 11:27 am
At one point I considered whether I should advise our freelance writers to warn all their relatives that their lives would be at risk around the time of the writer’s deadline.
My colleague does that just for holidays.. it does say who else to contact, but tbh if I’m emailing him a couple of days before he’s due to return then I’m not massively impressed at the insinuation I should take the action of remembering to resend it… in reality I think he probably does read *some* emails but clearly views the OOO as a way to absolve responsibility if he misses something..
How about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada?
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.