In my world, “please contact $Manager” is recognition of a staffing level problem. $Manager will have to decide what project to defer if a crisis comes up while someone is OOO.
Not only did Kopelman manage to turn his out-of-office message into an epic poem of sorts, but also, he actually went through the trouble of creating a delightfully snarky, vacation-specific email address for his recipients.
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The kicker is that they all get back on August 1st and are mad that their projects haven’t moved forward.
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But the best OOO (actually, an autoreply) came from Ryan Reynolds – you know, the actor and gin company owner. If you emailed him, you got this (I think there were others too – this is the one I got): Thank you for your interest in Aviation American Gin! You’ve reached my Out Of Office Mission Statement.
I meant email. The phone calls were similar, but a whole other problem. Your overdue notice? Did you discuss it with Head of Circulation (who knew the background)? No? Let me transfer you.
Stav is a senior editor and writer at The Muse, where she covers careers and work with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Before joining The Muse, Stav was a staff writer at Newsweek, and her work has also appeared in publications including The Atlantic, The Forward, and Newsday. Stav earned a B.A. in history with a minor in dance at Stanford University and holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School. She won the Newswomen's Club of New York's Martha Coman Front Page Award for Best New Journalist in 2016. She prefers sunshine and tolerates winters grudgingly. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter and can visit her website here.
To help you write yours, here’s everything you need to know, along with a few out of office templates for you to choose from:
I might be your coworker. I don’t get a lot of calls so it slips my mind constantly. Email I just set up a timer and it’s so much easier that way.
Thankfully, there’s a way to respond swiftly to all incoming texts without needing to jump onto your computer or phone. The answer is simple—automated text messages.
Way too long, but so hilarious. I don’t get condescending at all. I’m drooling while imagining I had this on my work phone when everyone thought their requests were life or death. Actually, I wanted my message to say, “I realize you think your request is vitally important, but I’d like to reassure you: I worked in a hospital years ago, and good news! It’s really not.”
Setting up an out of office message is quite simple. It can be set using the auto-reply function of your mail provider or program – just don’t forget to turn it off when you return!
If the thought of me sight-seeing in Lisbon is making you feel a little blue here is a cat GIF to cheer you up.
As a result, our text-based work communication has morphed into a series of strange, stilted, passive aggressive, and performatively upbeat exchanges. Much of the actual text of work email exchanges is ornamental filler language filled with exclamation points and phrases like “just looping back on this” that mask burnout, frustrated obligation, and sometimes outright contempt (the absolute best example of this is a wonderful 2015 post titled, “Just Checking In,” where writers Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford write fake emails in this vein to see who can cause the other the most panic).
My favorite thing is setting my OOO to only run for a specific amount of time. I will absolutely forget to turn it off if I have to do it manually, but we can just set a date/time range for it to start/stop. So I usually start it around 4 pm the day before and end it at 7 or 8pm the night before I return.
2. Out of office sick leave template. You don’t need to tell the sender too much, but it is important to say you won’t be available. If it is a long-term illness, you might not have a date set for your return.
Our office will remain closed for Christmas. We assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as we return to the office.