We have one key administrative assistant who works part time and I always forget — I appreciate that she sets an OOO every day because her department is very deadline driven and it helps me to remember that if I need something from them, I need to connect with her in the morning. We also have some staff who work the school year calendar and others who are year round; the OOO is so helpful in the summers!
Even though you're not actually responding to the email, you still need to mind your Ps and Qs. After your greeting, add "Thanks for your email."
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Over time, I began to suspect that those who might be telling the truth (of which I suspected there were very few), would mention their relationship to the person and possibly the cause, for example “My grandmother just passed away after surgery.” The ones who left it wide open (“someone close has recently died”) led me to imagine that it could be a random person in their city that they read about in the news, their goldfish, or perhaps a distant relative who had passed away in the previous few years.
It takes careful preparation to prepare your office before you close for the holidays. Proper messaging will ensure that you can plan around the shutdown for your customers, vendors, and employees, and that means you won’t have to deal with a lot of angry complaints before and after the break. That should make for a carefree holiday and well-deserved relaxation. Below are 65 of the best office closed for holiday messages for your customers & clients.
One of my reports ***NEVER*** sets their out of office. I have gotten pushback with, “Oh I just check my email while I’m out and forward if it’s important,” (NOT THEIR PLACE, PLUS THEY ARE HOURLY AND LEGALLY SHOULD NOT DO THAT). I have tried to remind which, I think ONCE over the last 6-7 years has worked. I should NOT have to remind someone of this. The one time they actually did it was a NIGHTMARE. Instead of Googling how to do it, they expected me to tell them how.
Amen. I have a co-worker who’s out of office message is always “spending time with my kiddos.” I don’t care. Just tell me who to contact and/or when you’ll be back.
When Outlook is setup to send automatic replies, you'll see a message under the ribbon with this information. Select Turn off to disable automatic out-of-office replies. If you want to modify the dates for your automatic reply or the message sent, use the steps above to modify your settings. Note: For Outlook 2007, to turn off out-of-office replies, select Tools > Out of Office Assistant and uncheck the Send Out of Office auto-replies checkbox. Update your Automatic Replies on the Outlook mobile app
I have nothing against part-time staff. But, if they only work until 4 PM until 5 PM, then the OOTO replies aren’t as helpful. If we had staff that only worked on certain days, then knowing that it may be more than one business day before a reply would be useful.
That’s what always got me! There always seemed to be an air of preemptive defensiveness? I’m definitely reading a lot into it based on other ways this person showed up in the workplace and how they treated others. Also I completely agree that some things are more important than work (!), but there was something about the way these were phrased that made me feel like ……… okay?? I know??? It just felt … performative.
My pet peeve is OOOs for the afternoon/an appointment when the person who set it up is NOT good at responding to emails in a timely fashion. If someone usually requires multiple reminders and follow up emails for me to get a reply to an email after 2 weeks, I don’t really need a notification that their responses will be delayed an hour until they get back from the doctor. It makes me think “who are you responding to that quickly, and why can’t you reply to me that fast??”
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When I tweeted this, some people argued that the pollster above was using his wife as an excuse. This might be true (and, if so, is probably a bad defense mechanism from some of the work culture habits described earlier). Another possible explanation is that the pollster is telling the truth — his inability to try and balance a vacation with some light work time built in is understandably frustrating and exhausting to those around him.
Automatic email replies. The IS&T Knowledge Base (KB) details how to set up automatic replies for your MIT email through the Exchange service or on Outlook. Both allow you to set the start and end date of the auto-response and to choose if everyone will receive this auto-reply or only those within MIT.
Team building content expert. Jessica has a double major in English and Asian Studies, and experience working with teams across cultures; including 3+ years in Taiwan.
With technological advancements, you always have access to your work and contacts, making it difficult to be offline even when you are not physically present in the office. However, it sometimes becomes a necessity to step away and treat yourself to a vacation.
A couple work friends and I banded together years ago to fill each others’ voicemails so it would be impossible to leave us new voicemails.
OMG if I got this OOO message I would pee my pants laughing! I think its brilliant! (But perhaps thats my weirdness popping out again… shoo shoo get back)