If I’m out for three months, *someone* is doing each bit of my job in that time. Me coming back and wading through three months of emails where the majority of them will involve someone seeing the OOO and promptly emailing my cover instead, and trying to track down which ones did that and cc-ed me, which ones did that and *didn’t* cc me, and which ones fell off is just a terrible use of getting-back-up-to-speed time.
I do this too! Depending on how busy my inbox is that day, I’ll also set it to start around 4:30 pm my last day in the office before going on vacation. I have a lot of people that email me at 4:56 expecting to be #1 on my list the next morning so I try to catch them that way.
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“I will be away on a vacation from June 3 to June 14. For urgent queries, you can call [person] at [phone number].”
My coworker tends to set his OOO for people to contact me, but he never bothers to tell me he’s going to be out of town and people may be contacting me. I’ll find out when I happen to email him and get the response. Not a huge deal, but the heads up would be nice! What if I was also on vacation?
But I also believe there’s meaningful power in the mundane cultural norms we set and practice. Email, for better or worse, makes up a large chunk of how knowledge workers communicate. So much of this communication is muddled by broken email habits and larger anxieties around performing productivity. We’re constantly nervous about asking too much of others or doing too little on behalf of our coworkers. But we’re also stuck in work patterns that force us to communicate constantly and normalize working and demanding things from colleagues at all hours.
Holiday Announcement Letter Giving A Letter To Inform About The Holiday Called Holiday Notice Letter Lettering Holiday Writing Letter Writing Samples Out Of Office Emails Examples Google Search Out Of Office Message Messages Memo Template
As an employer one of our policies is to Call in absent days not text them in. This hasn’t worked well as employees ( especially young employees) will still text in those types of messages. It would be wonderful to have a feature in the iPhone that allows for instant text response that can be set up for certain contacts( employees). Something similar to an out of office message in email…” I am not receiving text, please call … … …. and speak to me directly”
Your clients should know when they can expect a response and when you might be unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances.
I love this and want to start using it. I am assuming it’s pronounced “hood-a-lay” and that said hodilay has already begun when the OOO message was written!
Found it! (Reddit’s own search functionality is garbage, but it’s so easy to google for reddit posts, thankfully)
I say “thanks for your message” because it feels to brusque without a greeting – but I can see it either way.
I’m on PTO (Holiday) from the 28.09 until the 02.10 working again on the 5th of October, due to this my response will be delayed.
Q. What if I need to work during winter break, such as to conduct ongoing research that cannot be delayed until after the break?
My boss had this problem (outdated message), but it wasn’t his fault. No matter how many times he changed it, it kept reverting to the original message and dates. Even IT couldn’t figure it out.
Was required to do this at my last job and our script was to say “I’m working from home today. If you need to reach me urgently, call me at (personal/home/cell number).”
If you are reading this, it is because John Whatsisname cannot help you – he has left the company and no longer uses this email address.
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)