Student emails at 3am Saturday morning, then is sends an email Sunday night, miffed you didn’t reply.
I’ve never been a fan of the ones where people basically say “I’m working, but super busy right now, so I won’t get to your email for X (hours, days, whatever). Like, are you THAT busy.
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25. "Hello! Thanks for reaching out to [company]. We're closed today for the holiday, and will reopen tomorrow. If you leave your name, number, and a brief message, we'll give you a call when we're back in the office. Thanks again, and have a great day."
Website: https://news.mit.edu/2013/away-for-the-holidays-before-you-go-set-your-email-and-mitvoip-phone-auto-replies
But this absence of basic travel cybersecurity is a problem. Email is the number one threat vector for socially engineered attacks. An automatic reply message not only sends the information to designated contacts, but it also bounces back to people who send phishing emails. Threat actors use any details found in OOO messages to craft targeted social engineering messages. Well-targeted messages build trust that threat actors take advantage of.
This is the perfect out of office for anyone who just LOVES Christmas. As in, the sort of person who does all their Christmas shopping in September, wears Christmas-related apparel all November and December, and probably single-handedly organised the entire office Christmas party.
I’ve started using one that’s short/sweet but still has a little bit of JAZZ. I can’t take credit for it – I saw it on Twitter a few years ago. It’s been received well both inside and outside of my organization. Here it is. If it speaks to you, please yoink it and use it as you wish:
. Open the page and click on the “Send automatic replies radio button.” Until you turn off the assistant option, automatic replies will be continued to send. Keep as a reminder to off the assistant. Now, tap the “Send” option, and the date and time options become available.
For any assistance please raise a ticket and the concerned team will get back to you.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought it was funny and not annoying! I’m with Alison that it’s probably just a little wordy, but there’s no problem with the humor.
With all that in mind, take a look at the following tips and tricks and six examples to make your automatic responses more effective:
ImpactImpactThis nonprofit renovates abandoned Baltimore houses—and then sells them at a discount to local residentsImpactThis program is testing what happens when you give cash to people leaving prisonImpactThese Nobel Prize-winning economists explain why direct cash transfers are so vital to fighting poverty
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).
And although my colleague had mixed feelings about her own parents joining that population in Florida, she couldn't be too upset when her dad suggested flying down from Boston for a Red Sox spring training game.
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.
It’s summer, and you’re probably gearing up to take some time off work – including tying up loose ends, putting some final touches on projects, and figuring out the process of delegating. So many factors go into making sure you can actually disconnect, relax, and recharge over your planned vacation.
When I worked at Nightmare Small Business(tm), a coworker went on maternity leave with (privately shared among the staff, but not with the owner) the intent to give her notice at the end rather than return. She left a very professional, concise and informative out of office message. The owner proceeded to log in to her email and change the message to include saccharine references to both the pregnancy/baby and how much she “missed” being away from clients and how excited she was to return soon.